Brotato Review (Tleno)
An incredibly addictive survival roguelite, I would close it in frustration after incredibly lucky run gone bad and then some minutes later I'd launch it again trying another build and approach, quickly racking up a day worth of playtime.
This one has you running in a limited arena, dodging enemies spawning periodically, taking them down to collect dropped resources in short, mostly 60 second rounds, a total of 20 in a regular game. Between these rounds you pick level up upgrades and buy up items and weapons. It's a very simple loop, with short hectic rounds, and purchasing as thoughtful as you want it to be.
The most hooking part in all this? It's very fun to create and try out entirely different builds. There's a variety of characters to unlock by playing, each offering very distinct ways to play, giving bonuses in exchange for some playstyle or progression limitations. Like one rewards you for keeping enemies alive at end of life while dodging them, another one strongly restricts all ways of restoring health apart from food pickups that drop across level. Then there's weapons. Some characters have restrictions or additions but mostly everyone gets max six each, firing or swinging at closest enemy. Apart from damage outputs and trajectories, there's varied utility effects like improving player regeneration, adding permanent stats for sufficient kills trough a round, etc. And then there's stats and items you buy. See, there's just always at least a couple interesting interactions between those, especially in the second apart of game when you secure rarer artifacts with special bonuses like "one extra damage for each speed bonus" - and beyond lower difficulties it's crucial to find a tactic that helps scale the stats to keep up with enemies and give you an edge in survival. Also many items you buy come with a drawback that adds additional nuance - like one critical chance increasing item also slightly drops damage, but is that a big deal when you're focusing on critical chance effects of your weapons?
Only thing I dislike is that it's rather bit... granular. Way too many +1% to +5% tweaks. Sure you stock up a whole bunch of these per run but it's a far cry from how it feels to get a new powerful item in other Surviors-likes. Also I guess depending on build the screen can get very overwhelmed with stuff. Not as much as many other of these games, mind, but space here is very limited so it feels so much more tight. Also wish there was more music. The soundtrack works surprisingly well but there aren't that many tracks there.
I totally recommend this one if you enjoy experimenting with stats and builds, goes real cheap and yet is extremely gripping.