izigame.me

Disclaimer: I've finished the (base) game in 6 hours. I've gotten and used all the upgrades, weapons and gadgets. There's no value in replaying the game and I cannot understand how other reviewers have over dozens of hours in this game. Also for those who're looking for games with short pauses, this isn't it. Every run is up to 1 hour long, there are no checkpoints AND YOU CAN'T SAVE MID-GAME (which is simply silly).
Initially this game looks fun, the idea seems cool and I got it on sale so all good reasons to play a game. The gameplay itself started out alright and the lore felt like it had potential. Discovering secret rooms and traversing the wall was nice mostly because the background art was amazing, and the resource vacuum mechanic was nice to play around with. After about 3-4 hours of playing though, I've seen it all.
The game is just clearing a cave and then moving to next cave and clearing it and so on. There's nothing unique or interesting about any of them besides having different sprites for some caves. Eventually in your run you reach large maze-like caves which only makes the experience of exploring them more tedious and annoying.
In every run, you'll find TOO MANY different gadgets and weapons. Most of them aren't that useful or aren't worth improving in the first place. It just feels overwhelming and pointless, and because you'll be overloaded with them, whenever you find an upgrade it'll most likely be for an item you don't even use, which is nice.
After dying you're allowed to upgrade your ship and it feels like every upgrade is only meant to help you play the game less and sprint to the finish as quickly as possible. On my last run I wasn't even really focused on getting resources or exploring because my ship was overpowered and much of the mining was done by it anyway. I solely focused on drilling straight into the wall and looking for (spoiler) the keys that'll unlock the ending.
The lore, which I thought had potential, was very disappointing. You'll find pieces of the story scattered throughout the caves but they don't amount to much. The overall story is unfortunately pretty bland and shallow and the ending is very anti-climactic.
On a personal note, I was ready to quit this game after (spoiler) losing in an unwinnable situation. At the hour mark, after literally spending an entire hour of upgrading and improving, the boss will come over and K.O you, there's nothing you can do about it. It was extremely annoying since I thought I was ready to destroy it and continue exploring
After a bit of online searching I realized I was very close to the ending at my current state so I just went on another single run and finished the game. The ending, as I mentioned, was disappointing as it explains nothing of the game's world and is VERY anti-climactic.