LUCKROT

95% Taxed, 100% Janky Another 5/10 FPS from a Fanatical bundle. I really like the overall concept. It's dark, dystopian, and even funny at times, but what brings this game down is definitely the technical side of things. Gameplay: Chaos Without Much Depth Firstly, the gameplay is extremely banal. It's literally just enemies coming at you from all sides, creating chaos that you somehow have to control. Basically, the majority of the gameplay consists of jumping and dashing around to avoid enemy fire while trying to kill as many enemies as possible. Is it fun? Well, it kinda is, but I would definitely expect more from an FPS game than this. There isn't really any flow to the gameplay. You kind of have to create it yourself by running around like a maniac. Dead Enemies, Bad Hit Detection Another thing I really didn't like is that when you kill an enemy (usually the bigger ones), its corpse stays on the ground for a while. This gets annoying because, with some enemy types, the corpses actually look like the enemies are still alive. And that's especially annoying when there are like 20 other enemies around you. It's really important to save every millisecond so you can focus on immediate threats, but that's pretty hard when you don't know which enemies are still alive. The hit detection isn't great either, especially at longer ranges. Even with a sniper rifle, it's hard to kill an enemy that's really far away because the shots simply don't register properly about half the time. 95% Taxes and Endless Animations Then there are the roguelike mechanics, which are quite unimpressive as well. After clearing an area, you get to a certain hub, from where you slide to the upgrade room. Sighs. I've seen that sliding animation way too many times, and it eventually becomes quite annoying. I just want to make my way through the game as quickly as possible, but these animations feel redundant in my opinion. Anyway, once you're in the upgrade room, you gamble your coins to get upgrades. But before you even get to the slot machine, there's another time-waster I've seen way too many times: a screen that basically calculates the amount of taxes you have to pay on your earnings. The tax rate is 95%, by the way, so you basically get the absolute minimum from your earnings. I mean, I get the joke. It's a dystopian world, big corporations want you to be poor, okay, sure. But after a while, the joke isn't really funny anymore, and I just wish the game would remove this whole calculation screen and give me the taxed money immediately, without making me think, "Okay, so I have 500 coins, which means I actually get just 25." Like, you get what I'm saying? It's just an unnecessary mechanic that stops being funny when it repeats all the time. Just give me the scraps of my earnings and don't bother me with calculating this nonsense. Anyway, once you get to the slot machine, things are actually pretty simple. You gamble all your money, and afterwards, you can purchase upgrades for your weapons and the bots that hover around you while you fight enemies. Upgrades Make Everything Too Easy This brings me to another thing: your first run will be the hardest one, because once you get your guns and bots upgraded, the game becomes really easy. After you get everything to at least level 3, it's basically over. With an upgraded sniper rifle, you can literally kill bosses in a few seconds, especially when you use the dual-wield ability. Weapons and Abilities I just used Dual Wield and Shield all the time. Dual Wield essentially doubles your damage and fire output, while Shield makes you invincible for a decent amount of time. I also used Fireball in the beginning, but I don't think it's that good. You always have to stop moving when you use it, which makes you really vulnerable to enemy fire. It's not particularly strong either, and the animation takes quite a while to finish, leaving you unable to fire for a noticeable amount of time. As for the guns, I used the…

Luckrot is a fun but short roguelike shooter that nails its opening hours and fades a bit before the credits roll. The core shooting and movement is the highlight. It's fast paced and satisfying to move through, and the wave scaling holds up well, getting properly chaotic by the end of a run. There's a decent handful of weapons on offer, though I quickly gravitated toward a couple that fit my playstyle and mostly stuck with them. The gambling mechanic is fun in the moment but doesn't hold up over repeat runs. It's not unfair, that's just how gambling works, you lose more often than you win. The bigger issue is that runs start feeling samey regardless of what you gamble into, because the rooms and enemy placements aren't randomized. Only the upgrades change, so every run follows the same basic sequence underneath. The livestream gameshow framing is a great hook early on, but it never asks anything of you. I stopped paying attention to it entirely after a while. It would've landed a lot better if it was something I actually had to react to during runs rather than just background flavor. Regular enemy variety is solid for the small roster on offer. The three boss fights are the weak point, they're easy, basic, and don't really feel like boss fights at all. Visually the game is strong. The art style and atmosphere sell the dystopian setting well. Audio is fine but unremarkable, nothing that stood out either way. It's a short game, and I'd have liked more content to stretch the loop out further. That said, the price is reasonable for what you get. Technically it's clean, I only ran into one small visual bug where a specific shop upgrade displayed a cost of 1 every time I opened the shop, even though that wasn't the actual price. I'd recommend Luckrot. It's a good pick for roguelike shooter fans who want something fast and stylish for a short session, just don't go in expecting a ton of replay variety or standout boss fights.

https://youtu.be/ZGk6HvvSlLU Limited upgrade selections and extra layers of randomness in earning them makes it hard to feel the impact of choices over the long run.