Swarm Grinder

This game is an absolute blast. While there isn't a ton of variety (only 3 characters and 3 maps) considering it's only $8 you absolutely get what you pay for and more. All three of the characters feel very distinct, even though they can share skills, and the process of figuring out the best synergies was really rewarded for me as I went from struggling to clear low evolution to shredding Hell mode with only the Gatling Gun on Bulletstorm.

Also the soundtrack to Caves is so good it's singlehandedly worth the buy just to listen to it.

Simple, quick, and with an amazing soundtrack. Absolutely recommend.

It's one of the ok-ish ones.

Love the idea and the setting.
Coreloop is ok.
Upgrades are ok.
Meta progression is meh.
Replay value is meh.
All the stages feel the same. There are some slight changes between them but it's mosty rince and repeat.
Lacks polish. Bugs here and there. Nothing game breaking but annoying.

For the price (even though it's not on the expensive side) there are better options.
It's not "don't even look at it" bad but it's definitely not Vampire, Halls of Torment or Brotato good.

I give a thumbs up for the setting and the potential.

There are only 3 characters, 3 levels that look 99% the same, same boss at the end of each level, really lacking in content, 2d game that lags on 1080ti with 9700k when there are too many effects on screen, If the price was around 4 euros and not 8 i would recommend it but, there are much cheaper games with 30x content, Halls of Torment, Vampire Survivor, Army of Ruin

Lacks depth, there are much better survivor games out there

I love the gameplay loop, progression and style but this game seems very poorly optimized. I mean you can see for yourself the graphics and mob density it has but I'm at 12 FPS whereas on Diablo, Helldivers, Space Marine 2, etc. I'm at 144. I simply cant get past how slow it gets when I get above 50 or so animations happening at once, which is very easy to achieve with the combos you can get.

has a habit of not using skills or just getting stuck on objects/corners which ruins runs 7.7/10

A worse vampire survivor clone

I don't get the shit reviews. The game is fun and has a few unique playstyles. Could have had many more weapons, but it is what it costs.

It's fun. Sort of an active auto-game like Vampire Survivors, but instead of waiting for 30 mintues, you need to go to places and activate stuff to complete the map. A bit more vairety in maps and skills might have helped, but the fun still lasts for a while.

this is my new favorite roguelite bullethell game. my only 2 complaints are there isnt enough mechs and levels (it's worth what you pay, but leaves me wanting more content) and the controller setup is screwy. don't even bother trying to use a controller, unless you feel like using the tap pad on a ps4/5 controller or something similar.

Despite the last version of game does not sell to me much enjoyment, but these recent update really bring me back into the grind. The Upgrade feel nice with many meaningful choice, the Epic Gears felt overpowered which they nailed it.
I still do have some critiques, the leftover Gems is quite useless, with no upgrade for your gear or bonuses in the fight is little bit disapointing, especially when you got a surplus after opening gear slots and can sell your equipments.
Overall I hope we can see legendary gear soon

Overall, the game is really good about showing objectives, both in and out of runs. There always feels like something to strive for, whether it be one of the other characters, slots for upgrades, or even just that next drilling station to push your build (and your run) along.

Within a run, a major resource if Fuel, which your mech feverishly consumes, and can be obtained from enemies. The need for it, along with your own safety, helps make a fun balancing act of risk vs reward. You also can get various skills, split between weapons and modifiers for those weapons, leading to various builds with some very fun interactions. The runs themselves also don't take terribly long, my first few were about ~10 minutes, but the time to beat them can scale up with difficulty, generally to about 30-40 minutes at the (current) high-end.

Beyond any given run, there's achievements, unlockable maps and characters, progression for those characters, and now there's even a mod option for however you want to play. Lots of cool stuff, but I'm not going to drop a laundry list here. At 22 hours in, I have all of the current achievements, if you're looking for a gauge of current content level.

I really only have one gripe: clarity can be a bit of an issue in menus. It took me a while to even find the Workshop page, as I assumed it was Steam Workshop integration of some kind, but is in fact more upgrades/customization for your overall save. Additionally, when looking at upgrades in a run, you get a glossary on the right hand side of the screen, but it can be an awkward wall of text to parse and feels really out of the way. I'm not sure the glossary even exists when in the Garage, where you can equip upgrades that use the terminology. I found it a little difficult to properly gauge the power and synergy of particular upgrades when I started, but it's easily overcome as you play the game.

But yeah, game good. Pretty cheap, devs seem cool, updates seem to only be ramping up and I can't wait to see what else they have cooking.

Played exclusively on Steam Deck.
I was really enjoying this game and had just started to get some good results (after grinding to get some upgrades). Unfortunately I got an error that the game was missing executables and despite some downloaded updates and several reinstalls and restarts, this persists.

Good fun roguelike with nice design, with not as much replayability but decently varied for what it's worth to have a great time, although with lacking optimization and having some lag spikes on swarm spawns

its a simple yet elegantly crafted game with several interesting and well-executed concepts at play...but most importantly - its addicting, fun and easy to learn whilst still preventing an ever increasing challenge.

This is a pretty fun survivor game with a very quality>quantity approach to the weapons and upgrades. You'll find most of the weapons at least once within very fun runs but it's still satisfying to play through because every upgrade is pretty significant and the map is built in a way where you're always actively looking for something. The monster variety is a little low but they all have very different patterns which makes the way you move and dodge pretty active and different from a level to an other.

I also have to say that the optimisation of the game isn't great. I will start dropping frames if too many things spawn.

Decent game to chill, play <30 minutes or do something while you're watching something.

Swarm Grinder is fun to play. It keeps you on your toes as you try to figure out what weapons and upgrades to use to make your character able to squash the bugs and survive the round. It is easy to play a quick round or two, and come back over and over.

is good

It constantly drops to single digit fps on steam deck. Shouldn't be verified.

love it

Several game breaking bugs where you can't advance past certain points despite completing the quest/requirements. Reached out to dev through multiple channels and zero response. Very frustrating.

Honestly, this is just worse Vampire Survivors. Hate to say it and be that redundant, but at the end of the day that's what it is. The Meta Progression system isn't interesting, it's just flat values across the board, and the core gameplay is less appealing than other games that exist in the genre. Just spend your time elsewhere.

There is something about this game that is better than the others and I am not 100% sure it isn't just the satisfying feeling of squashing swarm eggs. Because everything else about it is only OK. The upgrades feel very slight and mostly unsatisfying. I have only won has only been a handful of times because it's an absolute brutal slog to the end of a round.
It's not as good as vampire survivor but It's one of the better raid survivor/swarm roguelikes. It's cheap at full price and I got it one sale at 50% off. If the price has gone up since this review, I will change my recommendation. If there was a choice in between yes and no, I'd select that.

Refreshing autoaim gameplay with uncomplicated meta progression...
... would play again <3

4 hrs into the game and I still cannot get past the first 20 mins. After this, it starts to lag pretty bad. I thought I could get by without a graphics card, oh well.

Can't for the life of me get the crit level up on the butcher even building full crit.

The game is pretty good for a brief experience if purchased during a deep sale, as I did. However, there are many issues.

The most glaring issue is the lack of content and how quickly the game becomes repetitive. The maps are basically the same. There are a very limited number of "skills" to choose from, and of the available ones, there are pretty clear "best" choices, and you can pretty much always wait/reroll to ensure you get the ones you want.

Another big issue is the game's severely demanding fuel resource mechanic, which makes the fuel-related skill a requirement, not a choice.

Also, there are three characters with their own specializations to play, but they are horribly balanced, and only one of them is actually viable (the initial character), and is overpowered. The other two characters perform drastically worse because of how their specialties interact with the resources and the basic gameplay.

The final big issue is that the game heavily stutters when there are a lot of enemies on screen, which for a game with this basic of graphics, seems ridiculous. Many others have also mentioned this issue. It's not my computer, it's the game itself that causes this.

There are other smaller issues, like the UI not being the best (can't see what you have when choosing), and many aspects of the skill mechanics are not clearly explained. There is a sidebar that "explains" then, but the explanations given are limited; they don't give explanations for everything, and some of them get cut off, seemingly because of a lack of sidebar space.

If these issues were fixed and more diverse content was added, it could be a very good game.

Normally a fan of Survivor-like games like this, but Swarm Grinder has been far more frustrating than fun to play. Very easy to go from full health to dead just from your dash getting stuck on something. Meta-progression is also not very good or intuitive.

Great Fun and the constant resource juggling keeps you on your toes. I wish it worked better on Deck as I feel it's not optimized at all.

A simple but fun Vampire Survivors game, the exploration factor combined with the fuel mechanics changes things up and makes it fresh compared to others of the same genre.

It's a Vampire Survivor-like, but with mechs and aliens.

The biggest differences are:
- that your vehicle is constantly consuming fuel, which is dropped by aliens, which means that have to constantly get close to them.
- that you do not level up, and instead get upgrades by clearing out special spots on the map.
- that runs end when you have cleared out enough special spots on the map, not when a timer runs out.

The third point also means that runs tend to be a bit shorter on average.

Swarm Grinder > Pepper Grinder
Swarm Grinder > Milwaukee M18 Cordless Grinder
Swarm Grinder > Sigma Male Grindset

Some great mechanics at play here. The game opens up once the Workshop is unlocked.

Awesome game! really enjoy the combos you can get and the game play. the progress system is alittle odd Update:There is an arrow button I didn't see hahaha. Over all I would 100% recommend this game.

side note I have 100% this game's achievements and think it was great. (killing a boss with a drill counts as any boss including the one that pops out of the ground.)

Swarm Grinder is a charming enough game. If you've ever played Vampire Survivors, or any of the million titles that fall under this genre, you'll know exactly what you're getting into here.

For the first few runs, Swarm Grinder stands out decently well. Each playable character has a ranking system; a series of challenges that unlock equipment slots or other fancy features. There are 3 playable characters and 3 weapon archetypes. Each character represents an archetype, and each archetype has 3 unique weapons. Beyond these, there are a handful of auxiliary skills that augment your firepower. Again, none of this should be new.,

After the first few runs, once the novelty and newness of the game has worn off, Swarm Grinder is a pretty samey affair. With so few weapons and so few characters, there is predictably, a good and reliable build. Each weapon class has its own damage type and generally damage boosts don't apply across weapon types, so mixing and matching is less than useful.

Most of my playtime is the result of letting the game idle. For a fan of the genre, you can expect to get about 6-12 hours before the tedium has set in. I don't regret my time or purchase and enjoyed exploring the different build options (what few there are).

Oh boy. Right off the bat, I'd say the game is good. I bought it on sale and ended up playing for 20 hours almost non-stop. The gameplay is fairly simple, and the lack of an overabundance of skills makes it possible to create a desired build every run (or every other run). Definitely worth its price, even without a sale, I'd say.

Now, for a more in-depth look:

You need fuel > You get fuel from mobs > You get mobs from breaking cells. This little chain ensures you're always on the move. Singled out a boss? Well, you still need fuel, so you'd better spawn some mobs. The more upgrades you have, the more fuel you spend. This whole system is pretty well done, in my opinion.

You have 5 skill slots that you can fill with skills. Each skill also has its own upgrade tree, with a choice between 3 special upgrades. You get skills by achieving milestones and clearing designated drill areas. There are a total of 14 skills, 9 active (3 types of weapons, 3 weapons of each type), and 5 passive skills. It feels to me like the game nudges loot towards passives, which is good, as different types of weapons don't usually combine well. As I said before, due to the limited number of skills, you can win at this game fairly consistently. A neat bonus is that most skills aren’t just plain "+N to stat." They do something interesting at level 2 of the upgrade, or, if it is just +N to stat, it actually feels pretty significant. Overall, build-making is fun. Some options feel underpowered, but I think you can make a winning build with almost anything.

Meta progression... this one I have mixed opinions about. It's something akin to extraction shooters. There are 2 spots on the level where you can get an item; if you win, you extract with both. If you lose, you extract with one. You’ll also get a lot of duplicates or items of lower tiers than you already have. This just feels clunky — the system of getting these items, not the items themselves. There's also a second, smaller meta progression branch with small passives that is actually customizable, which is neat. You’ll max it out pretty early on, and after that, you will rarely stop to collect in-game currency (by breaking special rocks).

Most stuff you have to learn through trial and error (no tutorial), and the community is too small to help you. I still don't know if burn patch damage stacks.

Overall, I would recommend it.

Another survivors-like, time killer but not worth buying over any of the others on the market, and plagued by awful performance issues.

I've been seeing drops to single-digits during moments with large numbers of enemies, and that just should not be possible in these games.

The mechanics aren't fun. Instead of collecting xp you need to collect fuel, because otherwise you die.

Skill upgrades come only from POI on the map. Going there means to remove fog of war which contains enemies, so you never just go where you need to go but circle all the time to discover more mobs, kill them and collect the fuel. Mobs become just annoying, killing them has no advantages than the forced rule of: you have to to get fuel.

With the current state of the game's performance, I can't recommend it despite loving its ideas. Each of the mechs feel fun, the way you clear levels feels satisfying and unique, but as soon as you enter a higher difficulty the game starts slowing down immensely. It's not built for the genre's core mechanic, which is filling your screen with bullets to clear out a ridiculous number of enemies. I'm hoping to come back to this in the future, but it feels extremely unsatisfying as-is

While Swarm Grinder is a little starved for content - especially when compared to its competitors (only 3 characters/3 stages) it remains deceptively fun. It struggles with frame drops at higher difficulties even on a high end PC (i7 13700k/4070 Ti/32 Gb DDR5 RAM) but it isn't unplayable or game breaking in any way. I should note that I picked this up during the current sale at 50% off - but for the time I've gotten out already, I'd definitely say I've gotten my monies worth. The OST thankfully is pretty solid, as stated earlier there's only 3 stages so you'll be hearing those same songs a lot. All in all its a competent survivors-like and definitely worth the cost of admission when priced at 50% off or lower.

TLDR: Aside from some small perfomance issues, and a lack of content - Swarm Grinder is surprisingly fun! 7.5/10 would recommend to most fans of the genre

A decent survivor-like. Great visuals and art style, some new ideas that work well, only problem is how little the base game offers. 3 ships, 3 weapon types (blades, bullets, explosives), and a handful of passives. Nothing here is BAD but its incredibly shallow considering how already lazy the survivor genre is in terms of gameplay. For $8 its stupidly expensive with how little is here when vampire survivors has like 4x the content and $3 cheaper. Pay $2 more and you can get deep rock survivor with more content even now in early access.

Not saying the game is a piece of shit or anything like that, and i get that even little things like art and animations can be time consuming, but in a genre that relies on replay value you could do better than 3 lazy and generic characters. Not even a flame thrower ship in a bug alien killing game.

Game is not fun.

-My first gripe is guns. Guns are anemic. You feel powerless against enemies. What kind of monster makes a gun called minigun and makes it fire slower than a bolt-action rifle and hold 15 bullets?
-Choices. 3 characters, 3 maps, a handful of guns. Not much choices you have there.
-Slow meta progression.
-This one is personal but i don't like the workshop system, i don't want skill tree, i want to get every upgrade there is. Also why tf i have to pay 100 gems to reset,
-Game always end with a mistake that player can't recover. It feels like player needs to have a deterrent, an ace in the hole. Monsters can easily swarm you because every time you're hit you get slowed, and when you are slowed some other monster will hit you, it's a downward spiral. You can escape with dash but it charges very slowly, and provided you haven't swapped dash for green fart or some other secondary ability.
-Shameless self promotion at main menu.

=Music is decent. Music style fits the theme but repetetive.
=Graphics are fine. Art style is nice but repetetive colors akin to Quake games (only red, brown and green are allowed)

+The way enemies spawn is very innovative. It's nice to have some control how enemies spawn.

It all boils down to two words; boring and repetitive. But still nothing a competent developer can't fix. I'll be watching this game. I hope devs change it around.

The game is fun but the performance is really bad.
In the later stages of the maps when there are many enemies on the map it stutters severly.
Apparently other players have this issue too.
Didn't find any statement from the devs regarding this; neither in their devblog nor in the steamforum.

Game is fun but I cant recommend it for deck users. Some text is missing, this can be fixed with proton experimental. But in the endgame there is a heavy stuttering, I managed to power through it, but all enjoyment was long gone. This should not be marked as Deck Verified. Sorry, a fun game but please fix the stutter before you do extras like modding and what-not.

Swarm Grinder is an intense arcade-style game where you face off against relentless waves of enemies in a fast-paced, bullet-hell environment. The gameplay is challenging yet addictive, requiring quick reflexes and strategic movement to survive the onslaught. With its vibrant visuals and smooth performance, it’s a perfect fit for the Steam Deck, allowing you to enjoy the chaotic action anytime, anywhere. If you’re a fan of challenging, adrenaline-pumping arcade games, Swarm Grinder is definitely worth a try.

Game is fun so far. Pretty interesting take on a bullet hell. After 3 runs I will say for how low quality the graphics are... it doesn't take much for the game to start dragging FPS wise. I don't have the best rig ever... but this game shouldn't be struggling or dropping below 30 fps... literally ever. Especially when the devs literally only make these games it looks like. I'm all for understanding that coding isn't easy... but I also believe if you're going to release something for any price... you should make it right. Still. All in all I'd say worth it for 4 bucks.

Interesting take on the V Survivors genre, enjoying it thus far.
Edit- They fixed the bug about five minutes after I posted this lol. Thanks. Looks very promising, but unfortunately when I die the game more or less freezes and this makes progression impossible. I would recommend if not for this game breaking bug.