Crush the Industry

It's a very good, inventive, and clever game made by a tiny dev team. This is the kind of game I will play for maybe 30 hours and then stop. That's good enough for me, but if you want a roguelike with more replayability than that, this is perhaps not for you.

There are 10 extra difficulty levels, plenty to see and do, and the combat system is easy to pick up. As with many deckbuilders, you kind of 'figure it out' eventually, leaning into a few specific strategies and the game stops posing any real challenge. It's a REALLY fun few dozen hours though, so definitely at least try the demo if you enjoy deckbuilders.

Decent deckbuilder. Great art style. Cool tunes. Easy to pick up if you're familiar with the genre. Kinda short though. Maybe check it out on discount.

There's alternative characters to try and new skills to unlock. But I've beaten the game on first try and gave up on doing a second run. It feels like I've seen enough. It doesn't feel like there's great great strategy or mastery involved, or more story to reveal.

A very well made deck builder (that doesn't feel too much like one), with a Beavis & Butthead/Ren & Stimpy-ish sense of humor. Optimized well, with a small footprint. Game follows a series of JRPG-ish battles (think Dragon Quest), as you ascend the corporate ladder. Decent amount of decisions, fun skills, upgrades, and good synergies. Gorgeous art is a sweet cherry on top.

Slay-the-Spire meets Earthbound. Love that the gameplay isn't yet another card game.
The thematics are about working in the games industry, so this has been very cathartic for me.
Check this one out for sure, it's a fun one!

I got to and completed the corporate hell without losing a single time, so i have a BIG ANNOUNCEMENT:
This game is too easy for me.
(Gruff gruff) unlike you caauals.

I love your games to bits! I wish I can buy the soundtrack so I can listen to the Taskmaster 3000 on repeats and while supporting you guys. This review comes from the heart:

- Soundtrack -
Pros: The music is AMAZING! It flows really well and it fits the game perfectly. The boss fights music is amazing and the first floor is ICONIC imo. I even like the added effect of having low sanity being wonky.

Cons: None except the main menu, it doesn't loop well after it's done.

- Art/Character/Event Design -
Pros: They are excellent! The shading of the characters are very well done, the colours really pop even to some muted colour characters, the background is colourful and interesting. The playable characters all look different and see that they personality show. I like the chatter from all the enemies which get me to chuckle a bit. I like Gabe and Tweaks design. I really like the themes of each floor. From Toxic Trenches, to Creatives, to Coders and the ???.

Cons: The Stereotypes of the characters will turn off some people and will not click for others. For me, there was a "shock", after a little bit, I later understood it's sarcastic and its parody nature to the game. It not a "critique" of the gaming Industry, just a "thing happens" type humour. From the never funny stereotypes of Neck-Beards to Risque-Influencers with the White-Knights that is funny, they are all low-hanging fruits jokes that isn't to be taken seriously. The part that people critique the most that I understand why people complain to is the "People died at work" event. For me it's not problematic since it fits the game where you are trying to take over the company (and to my own head-cannon, trying to make it better.) and getting rid of the big bad Ceo, but to others, they see it as a insensitive topic.

There should be a warning for this type of humour for people who are sensitive to these topics alongside the flashing lights warning that is already in the game. For the people who are sensitive to Dark Humour, the game is not for you. For the people who are a fan of the Stereotypes portrayed in this game and try to apply for anyone else, go see a psychiatrist.

- Game-play -
Pros: The game-play is fun and awarding. It's easy to Pick-up and Play on the steam deck and maybe a mobile game. I really like the synergy with other skills and it does get harder after hell 6, learning the game isn't difficult, learning the synergy is. I like chilling with the game with the music and vibe.

Cons: The game can be repetitive if you try to binge it.

- UI -
Pros: I really like how informative the game mechanics is, plus all the positive and negative effects in the game. You can see cycle rate, see the enemy damage, intention, healing with items at the bottom right, seeing my skills, effects on my character at the bottom right enemy hp, my hp and all the design is perfectly readable and easy to access.

Cons: There's a wiki for the game, not fully done. There should be a log-book for enemies and items in the game in the main menu where if you fight them a certain amount of time, kill, die or other to it, it should unlock their attack patterns with extra info instead of relying on youtubers/game wikis like all other games. This is a suggestion I would love to see.

- Sound effects -
Pros: Very good, very satisfying and sometimes very funny. The screams are funny. No glitches or bugs with sounds effects.

Cons: None

I give this game a 8/10, I recommend! Thank you for reading!

After 20 hours, I gotta say, this game is fun and addicting. The game industry parody is done really well. The workplace parody is done really well. Some of the combat mechanics make it REALLY unique (like the health rolling mechanic). It has a lot of promise. I beat it with 3 of the 5 characters on normal difficulty. Here are some constructive criticisms:

1) More variety. It looks like a lot of routes are the same. IDK if there is more variance in the higher difficulties, but on normal difficulty, after enough playthroughs, you can guess with incredible accuracy what fight is up next. For a roguelike, that should not be the case this early on

2) Minion Manager needs to have a way to gauge or see the skills it uses. It evolves, consumes your consumables, and you have no idea what it does. It seems to have random effects. There needs to be greater control over how this minion develops. Also, If 5 is the max level for it, it needs to stop consuming every consumable you try to acquire after that point. Losing money AND consumables makes this a liability at its current strength level

3) A compendium of skills and talents, not just the unlocks. We need to be able to click on the character and see ALL of the skills and talents that they can potentially get. You can slow this down by having to take the skill/talent in question in order to add to the compendium (then add like an asterisk or something for skills not in the compendium yet)

4) More synergy with status effects. I get that to make status effects effective, you have to build into it, but it seems like if you're not building into all of them, it can't be done well. There should be a talent to have a chance at a status effect to not decay, or a talent at makes fire reduce by 25% instead of 50%. Maybe a talent that makes Poison damage deal Pure damage

This game has an excellent foundation and I'm interested in seeing where it goes. Also, get that mod support going

This game has a great concept, but it's so repetitive and it's way too easy that you can't enjoy it after playing some runs. I just beat hell 5 and haven't lost a single run yet. If you're looking for a challenge this game is not for you.

Great take on a deck-building roguelike. Humor and Art direction are on point.

fun and funny. I like the style they went with and I was quick to understand the games mechanics. unique characters give some variance to your runs and Im interested to see how the game will evolve and possibly be expanded on in its life cycle.

completed normal run first try without taking any damage, the game seems easy but there are higher difficulties to play at too.

Wriggly, energetic pixel art meets Earthbound/Slay the Spire-em up. A simple description for a little indie game that has so much passion and humor in equal measure to tried and true deck builder gameplay loop. I was perfectly content with how much I've played and I've only scratched the first two difficulty levels.

I have 300+ hours in Slay the spire, I highly recommend this game for roguelike deckbuilder enjoyers.

Between the humour, references, and honestly gorgeous retro style, I will say it is surprisingly well thought out.

By the end of my first run I had already gained such an understanding of what to aim for in the future.
I will say some of the mechanics being intentionally obscured with the lack of tutorial is great and a downside in some ways.

Overall great and I hope it gets the recognition it deserves!

The Mother vibes are great, the snapshot of the culture tropes and the slay the spire style progression with a tweak make this a pretty fun experience worth the cost of entry. Looking forward to what comes out Cognoggin Games as this gains its rightful popularity in this genre

I highly recommend playing this game if you’re a fan of rougelike games or just want something fun to spend your time on. It oozes with charm and passion from the developers in the best way possible.

listen I love this game but that damn fight with the cockroaches needs to be fixed. It's terrible. It's not fun fighting these things. Them being able to summon two eggs and then into eggs on death is so annoying. Doing 98 damage through thorns and dealing with 3-5 enemies stacking unblockable decay is also not fun. It's not even satisfying to win the fight. It takes forever.

Only played for less than an hour but can already see this is a great game and has a tonne of replay-ability. Lots to unlock (be nice to that lock!) Having a lot of fun with this game and can see it a a regular game I'll be coming back to.

Criminally underrated deckbuilder-ish roguelike. The humor lands, the art style is fantastic and there's plenty of builds to try out. Stop sleeping on this game.

I waited for a full release to really play this game. Now that it's finally out of early access I'm going give it my full attention. It's basically Slay The Spire with the aesthetic of Earthbound and the topic of the video game industry. Very cool and very fun, and definitely recommended if that sounds appealing to you.

Maybe this game just didn't speak with me, but I just couldn't find it in myself to enjoy this.

First off, this game feels oddly, like...Crass? I understand that it's made to critique the gaming industry, but some of the jokes that come up are either a little outdated (the neckbeard comes to mind- kind of a tired stereotype) or just in poor taste (the 'someone died at work' event, for example). It feels mean-spirited in ways that distracted me from some of the better moments of the game (namely, the soundtrack. I very much enjoyed a good number of the songs!)

Secondly, the gameplay felt shallow and a bit too easy- I was able to beat the game on normal with only two attempts, and it really didn't instill that ecstatic feeling I've gotten from other games in the genre- It felt more like 'Oh, yeah. Fair enough.' The strategies are fairy simple, the power ups a little too frequent- I never felt like I was working in the games systems so much as settling into the same thing each run (Which, I will admit, may be because I had only done two before I decided this game wasn't for me.)

I really did want to like this game- It's art is charming, it's premise is funny, and it gave me some of those fuzzy feelings that playing Earthbound or Mother did when I first played them. I am going to be looking at this developer's future works to see where they go!

the game is too easy, I beat the game during my first run and unlocked all the characters. Don't get me wrong, the game is still fun, just wish the base game was harder

It's pretty fun! Maybe a lil too easy if you're familiar with Roguelites, but you unlock additional difficulties as you normally do in these games. Would love to see more updates in the future.

Its... Good but samey.Playing is fun! i like the limited deck size a lot. It has its own charm and the jokes feel made for internet addicts from 2016-2020. But it's a slay the spire clone through and through. Which in this case is good! But also feels like ive played the game 100x already. it doesnt add enough to make itself different from it either. Thats where the review ends. If you are a StS addict and still want more this could be a game for you.

I love the style and the music is sick. Clearly some one put a lot of love into it and it shows, really enjoying it.

Bought it because everyone was saying EARTHBOUND. Pretty rad game, pretty sure the magic effects are straight out of Earthbound...

...but i am even more sure the first battle sequence music is right out of Dunhero.

It's a quirky roguelike deckbuilder with a great sense of humor and a ton of throwbacks to classic snes era video games. It's a lot of fun, the music is full of bangers and the enemies are hilarious. It's almost like Alice in Wonderland but about the video industry.

It's fairly easy for the genre, but each character is different enough and there's enough unique encounters that there's a good amount of replayability.

Nice game

When I play this game, I imagine it’s my own company where I work, and I’m fighting these battles with my superiors. A fantastic game, really polished, and you can tell the developer truly cares about their community, which I really appreciate.

I love Reddit for occasionally showing ads for hidden gems like this one—highly recommend it!

This is a great game. I'm honestly shocked it's not more popular. One of the best vibes for the roguelite genre.

Good satire of the videogame business with fun characters and dialogues. The gameplay is ok, not great but it does the job, the main selling point here is the humor.

This game is super great!

♥

This game has been a delight to play, the humor is right up my alley and the art work and music is splendid. The homages to more classic games also did wonders for me (Really felt like I was in a different version of Earthbound with some of the mechanics and the witty descriptions for the enemies). Would very much say if you enjoy rogue likes, at least take the time to try out the demo and support a great indy game.

Just beat the final difficulty! What a ride, a game definitely made by fellow gamers for gamers.

The Good: really well balanced game for the most part. Its really funny at times and the game mechanics are so much fun. The characters are pretty funny and I like all the different builds you can do. The game is relatively quick too once you get a hold of the mechanics it's easy to whip through a run. I really loved how it felt much harder to make a broken deck in this game. Other games like slay the spire or monster train it only took two cards to do insane damage, but here I had to organize my whole deck and my relics to start doing insane damage. The game scales difficulty really well which I find rare to like the power scaling this much. My god, the music is incredible fantastic job.
The meh: I felt like some of the mechanics were copied from other rogue likes I've played like slay the spire. The "make a skill appear more" needs adjusting. I ended up just skipping those events since it made the skill appear at what seems like a 75-80 percent ratio which ends up flooding my deck, but if I made two skills appear more they would just end up both not appearing often at all. The percentages for events felt really brutal. I did the "shady investor" one I think around 9 times and never got the good reward (which is maybe the joke and I'm just missing it, but the game says 50 percent) then the event that increases with ten percent every click I only got once to trigger before 100 percent out of maybe 10 goes as well.

Overall, I really love this game. I needs some fine tuning, but it's hilarious. I love the pink afro guy so did my partner, the attacks and the builds you can do really activated my brain. The music and design is just great. I will be buying it again for a friend when I get done writing this.

It's fun.
It's creative.
The runs feel like you can have a lot of builds with them.
The characters feel unique.
There are tons of things to unlock.

Worth your time and worth your money.

past its time

If you like rouge-likes and Earthbound this game is for you..

A lovely little love letter to Gaming culture, really love each of endings.

It's a really good Mother-esque deckbuilder! I feel like I need to say this: the designs and characterization that the creators put into the game is incredible. From start to finish, the critiques of game culture and development are on point, and the range the art has is amazing.

My only reason I hope that this game gets a bit more love towards the mechanics side is a pattern I've seen developing in my own runs. The characters, from what I can tell, share a lot (if not all) of core abilities that are really good, so I find myself gravitating towards the same things, over and over again. There's so much potential for unique builds, but if I go for the higher levels I fear that I might just go back to what works every time instead of what's best or what's interesting. I really wish that these characters, who the creators pack so much individuality and life into, could reflect how different they are with unique playstyles and abilities. But who knows, maybe this is the next thing they're working on, it is an early access game.

small spoiler - one thing I really appreciate about the final boss is how it has an attack specifically designed to counter archetypal builds of the character you chose. I'm interested to see how the developers make these builds stand out more.

For an early access game, I'm thoroughly impressed, and really hope that such an amazing and interesting game can get just a little more finesse to become amazing.

Very enjoyable roguelike deckbuilder that plays like a JRPG that takes heavy inspiration from Mother/Earthbound. I appreciate the narrative choice of making it a satire of game development. As someone who has been in the industry, I can relate to a lot of it. Even if you don't work in game dev, this is still funny and relatable. So far, the character designs are fun, evocative, and they play differently.

Love me some Mother series combat and atmosphere, and all the references and memes are excellent. Can't wait to see how this one will turn out!

Ever wanted to play slay the spire but miss earthbound and other retro games? Yeah this game is a love child between those thoughts.

Pros, Amazing gameplay
Killer music
good humor
and the endings are just a perfect ten.

Cons, Stagnant on the second visit onward. as the are only 4 bosses total and always in the same order
Some things are poorly explained (like how the 3 mental ailments are even gained) and other functions seem useless, may be I missed the one hero who is meant to use charge but I've yet to see a proper way to build it up that doesn't auto use the whole thing.
Finally I'm personally not a fan of the art style, not the worst I've seen by a mile but not charming enough to call it a pro.

All in all though while simple those pros far outshine the cons and I'd give this game a 9.5/10 with a single condition... I'd love to see more added into the game, as of the time of typing this there are only 4 heroes, half the starting powers are locked off, and when the game ends it shows you should be able to fill out your special moves more. Basically keep working on this guys you've got a winner here even if not everyone sees it!