Swarm Grinder

If what positive reviews have to say sound good to you, IGNORE ME AND BUY THIS! I can tell when devs care and they do. I objectively have more good points to make about this game than bad... But my head hurts.

Fun game ruined by horrible progression. In order to unlock equip slots you need to rank up by completing challenges. Maybe I suck, that's fine. I don't care if the game is hard, I'm fine with a game being hard, especially a roguelike. The problem is the challenges are BORING. Every single challenge falls in line with, "complete a level only using the base weapon." or to the blades robot, "only use blade weapons" I have builds I wanna try, but there is no point. Beating a level isn't going to unlock my equipment slots, it would be a waste of time. So after I lose, I can't say to myself, "okay let me try a different strategy." I have to just do the same thing again. I have TOO MUCH equipment, and only one slot available on two mechs. Oh cool I unlocked the mech that shoots rockets. Oh well the first thing it wants me to do is JUST use rockets.

The game PLAYS WELL. I mean it, there is fun to be had. The way enemies spawn in the red bubbles is really cool and you can plan ahead, even let the upgrade stations crash down on them if you bait them right. The weapons and upgrades are cool, and everything looks real smooth and clean. You don't get lost in a visual mess many survival games have an issue with. I think there is a good game here, and I'd have more fun if I just did my own thing, but in order to advance at all you have to strip away your creativity and play how it tells you. So for me personally, I'm either saying "Okay, FINE! I'll step in line so I can see what these items do." Or I'm doing my own thing with a thought in the back of my head saying, "You know you are just wasting your time right?"

Pretty good

Game is ok, but runs very poorly. On my 4070ti/i9 14th gen or my asus handheld, once the butcher's blades start sticking around the fps drops terribly. This + the badguys aren't all that hard - seems like it could be better, but its sort of boring ... and this is coming from someone who plays Brotato religiously.

Amazing game design. Took me a few rounds to get the mechanics and flow of the game. Before I knew it I was immersed in the experience, for hours. Reminds me of the good arcade classics. Simple, elegant and addictive! A must have!

This is the prototype of a very good game. I appreciate a mech-suit sci-fi take on the Vampire Survivors sub-genre. In its current form this game is lacking variety.

There are 3 mech suits that give you benefits for building around each of the three weapon categories, of which there are exactly three weapons per category. Unfortunately that means the most optimal build is if you are running the rapid fire mech you should prioritize the three rapid fire weapons, respectively. You can deviate and be successful, but the game doesn't push players to experiment enough.

Once this game majorly increases its arsenal and improves some qol stuff, it will be a game worth mastering, but right now its too easy to lose interest in a short amount of time.

Back into the bullet heaven or "Vampire Survivor-alike" mines. It's nice that when the urge hits these games tend to be $5 or less, Swarm Grinder coming to me for $3. I was interested as word of mouth came that it was contentious, with gameplay decisions that rankled the traditional VS-alike fan who wants to get their AFK build up early and often so they can be rewarded with a sensation of progress while watching a video on the second monitor. Let's see what SG brings to the genre.

Light on story, Swarm Grinder throws you into the mute shoes of semi-anonymous pilots to fly a battle capsule mech down to a hostile bug-infested rock to clear out the alien cells and set up mining rigs with light commentary and world building from little sister. Set up enough drills to spawn the boss and finish the run, making SG as fast or slow as you make it instead of the traditional 20-30 minute holdout. There's a very strict system making you think about those holdouts: fuel. Constantly draining(biggest fuel tank may be around 300, set-up arsenal will usually drain 20+ per second), you are forced to set an efficient pace for opening cells by moving into them with a proximity circle and producing aliens to murder and succ the juices of. It's honestly an overblown thing to gripe about unless you have sworn a blood oath against timers in video games(which I sympathize with a lot, actually), as long as you can kill any enemies you can always drift towards your next drill site with lazy loops to spawn the new guys and kite away from them. I like this system, makes SG more of an arcade shooter instead of an aspiring Cookie Clicker idler.

What I'm not a fan of is the lack of variety. There's 3 mechs and 9 weapons but really each themed mech uses their set every run from Dakka, Stabbin' and Bombs. You can mix and match but are generally weaker for it and any pure set built well can handle every situation in the game. You can grab extra passives that tend to be "more damage" or "more health/fuel is less annoying" but they follow the same problem of being lumped into weapon groupings. Most of the individual weapon trees are also devoid of personality, taking about 3 runs each before you spot the best options and only take 2 out of 3 traits to avoid increasing fuel consumption since enhancing a slot is free, adding a trait slot is not. The balance really isn't there for things like space artillery being centered on you vs the other two choices, or doubling your gatling gun output all the time instead of when you're under half health.

Making things more milquetoast are passive equipment slots(some general use, most by weapon group) and experimental caches that are also separated by weapon group. When the weapon pool only technically cracks double digits with a single activated ability per run(or not, the drone is a passive sixth gun slot) this is a bullet heaven that solves itself far too quickly. There are a few bad/trap choices too, though at least experimentals are a thought exercise instead of a pure trick like the railgun ultimate that empties your fuel tanks and doesn't do much else. This game solves itself faster than the obligatory padding achievement for 25 wins.

There's one stage. The menu says three but the two unlocked are Stage 1(some walls) and Stage 1(poison hazards) with mild changes to enemy roster. Every stage ends with the same simple boss and the entire color scheme of the game is a biege-brown-yellow stretch that starts as a cool alien and oppressive atmosphere but really doesn't lend itself to being repeated for each third of the game. SG badly needs 2 more tilesets and 2 more bosses for novelty alone. Oh, and a grace period or option to not pick up a touched power up would be appreciated for when you end up kiting around a fresh drill and the thing lands on your head.

Spending three paragraphs badmouthing SG seems like tipping my hand to form the thumbs down yet I'll recommend it anyway. It's a bite-sized VS-alike that you can get on sale for $5 or less. The music is good(though repetitive), the spirtework is pretty fluid, SG makes a sincere effort to add more gameplay elements to a genre that almost always benefits from them(unless you can't stand the fuel system or cell spawning, then rip.) I enjoyed experimenting and solving the build options even if I did so before I had the 3rd stage unlocked.

There's a good bit of personality and charm here, a nice core of a game well worth a purchase and a pat on the back for the devs. I'll recommend SG even though I feel they out to their next title before finishing the second half of the environments and enemy roster.

Good:
The presentation is excellent, & it adds a lot of innovations to the bullet heaven genre, so this is worth getting even if you already own other bullet heaven games.
Attractive female characters.
Persistent progression.
No propaganda.

Bad:
Needs more optimisation,
I get serious lag near the end of a level when there are lots of enemies on screen; I found I was able to mitigate it somewhat by turning off v-sync (which luckily didn't result in screen tearing) & lowering the resolution (not a big deal in a pixel-art game, but the game still doesn't seem to look quite as nice when I do that).
I also noticed a small animation error; The gatling mech that you start with has a green cable on one side. This cable keeps swapping sides as you rotate. This is actually an easy fix for the artist, so they need to get on that.

It's hard to say anything bad about this game, especially for only 10 bucks.

Gameplay is great and so is the OST!!!

Swarm Grinder is a new take on the Vampire Survivors formula.

Nice concept but way too grindy, even with "grinder" in its name.

The game is tiny, has just 3 maps, only has 3 playable characters and a total of 14 skills with variations.
Feels like nothing in comparison to massive games like "Vampire Survivors" or the FREE "Holocure"...
Heck, even "20 Minutes Till Dawn", "Scarlet Tower" and "Bio Prototype" are chunkier and offer more.

I did not like the game at first and only played it while watching something else.
After grinding through the first challenges to unlock item slots and perks, the game finally ramped up.
There are very few builds and most of them are already meta, not much experimenting here.


To be honest, nothing special. Not bad, but nothing noteworthy...
Only for fans of the genre who want to mix it up a little.
Better go play HOLOCURE, it is free, has lots of characters with unique playstyles, tons of progression as well as dozens of mini-games.
The devs should have put more effort into this project, it could have been something, not just a glorified abandoned demo..

Game play gets repetitive and boring. Even on 'Hell' difficulty your fighting the same enemies in the same pattern for the same amount of time. the only difference is that in Hell difficulty you don't get any rewards which is just weird.
From its launch I haven't noticed any improvements to the game. No expanded content, no new characters, no new enemies, no new maps, no new items.

Its fun sure until you realise its not.

Also the final mission for the bulletstorm character is bugged and has been since the game launched.

There do be a swarm

Although there was nothing inherently "wrong" that i could find other than you cant seem to progress with some chars no matter how often you for-fill the need to level up...
This game just really is 3/10, i got it for 50% off and even then i feel like games such as brotato and vampire survivors or even halls of torment just have so much more to them for a similar price that i just cant say this game is worth purchasing at this stage.

Lots of fun but really lacks a variety of weapons and unlockable skill branches. There needs to be more weapons of certain types and feels like a grind to unlock the ones that are eventually available. I wish the levels, weapons and upgrades had more of an aesthetic change because it is a really nice art style.

The game ist lacking some late game content, but it has a nice gameplay loop.
Slashing and shooting through alien hords and popping alien cells is really satisfying.
One round take between 15 and 30 minutes in average, which makes it a good game for in between.

Nothing mind-blowing or insanely unique but it's an enjoyable Vampire Survivors-style game.

Drop, mine, kill, upgrade, repeat. The more you mine, the more enemies appear. Without enemies, your gas depletes and you eventually take damage. Upgrade your weapons to kill more means using more gas which means you've gotta kill more. Kill more so you can get better guns. Better guns means......you get it. It's a nifty game.

Swarm Grinder takes the Vampire Survivors formula and adds difficulty and branches weapons into different choices, similar to how 20 Minutes Til Dawn functions. Honestly, it's solid.

FWIW the game doesn't run well on my Steam Deck. Text and prompts display intermittently. It runs well otherwise, but I can't see which upgrades I'm choosing.

MERMİ CEHENNEMİ türündeki keyifli oyunlardan biri. Türk yapımı olması da ayrı bir tat.

Great for wasting some time

One of the best games in the 'survivors' category.
Pros:
+ interesting approach to the enemy spawning system, map exploration, fuel management and run progression
+ adrenaline pumping waves with a soundtrack which makes it even more fun
+ unique characters make the runs feel completely different for each one of them with a lot of various builds
+ quite hard at the beginning which is good
+ well thought achievments (challenging as well)

Cons:
- more enemy types would be nice
- style for the maps is quite similar, some additional skins like in 'luftrausers' or 'downwell' could do the job
- experienced some hardcore performance drops in longer runs (30+ mins) with a lot of upgrades stacked

Been playing since the early access and the game was being developed in a really good direction.

V posledních týdnech jsem dal šanci tomu, vyzkoušet mnou přehlíženému žánru roguelite. Neustále opakování něčeho k dosažení lepší výzbroje a výstroje mě odrazovalo zejména kvůli časové náročnosti. A musím říct, že ani po vyzkoušení Swarm Grinderu jsem tomuto žánru nepřišel na chuť a to i přes kvality hry. Krásná vizuální stránka, dobrý soundtrack, který se ale po chvílí ohraje a tuna rubání podzemské havěti. Ovládání je precizní, možnosti módování hru neskutečně oživí a dají možnost i lidem, kteří nehledání pouze výzvu ale i trochu bezmyšlenkovití akce. Roguelite nikdy nebude můj oblíbený žánr, ale jsem velmi rád za vyzkoušení SG, páč hra má srdce a dokáže dostatečně zabavit.

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In recent weeks I've given the overlooked roguelite genre (by me) a try. The constant repetition of something to achieve better weaponry and gear has put me off, mainly due to the time commitment. And I have to say that even after trying Swarm Grinder, I didn't find myself liking the genre despite the game's qualities. Beautiful visuals, a good soundtrack but it gets old after a while and a ton of underground vermin extermination. The controls are precise, the modding options make the game incredibly lively and give people who aren't just looking for a challenge but a bit of mindless action a chance too. Roguelite will never be my favourite genre, but I'm very happy for trying SG, because the game has heart and can entertain enough.

How many kilometers are there from the nearest gas station? :)

My Review

This game is a 10/10 in its genre. It was very entertaining when it debuted last year in early access. Now you get three "characters" or "suits" to play as and they have turned what was already an addicting game into a more enjoyable experience overall.

The music is excellent! Can't really get enough of that metal tune, the drums mostly when the swarm waves attack you... will make you bob your head to the music and will give you a very nice dose of endorphin haha. Get it now!

Fun little title, scratches the itch of playing this kind of games.

I played it for a little bit and I have to say so far I had allot of fun.

Fast-paced addictive game

Swarm Grinder's tags are misleading and wrong. Its not a bullet hell and I definitely wouldn't call it a rogue anything.

Its a lot like Vampire Survivor in that the player walks their character around avoiding enemies while shit just keeps shooting out of it on its own and lots of swarming enemies walk into the shit and die. The only real difference in terms of gameplay is power ups are collected by unveiling marked off hexes instead of leveling up, enemies drop fuel instead of xp, and you'll start dying when out of fuel.

Its not a bad game!

Pretty sure the Turkish developers have a Gadget Hackwrench fettish given the mechanic girl featured throughout the game. Its a shame she married a fly and mated with it.

Perfectly optimized for Macos, great for quick gaming sessions, and a true candy for fans of bullet hell games!

Playing this game is an absolute blast! The diverse range of skills and abilities available to players ensures that every run feels fresh, exciting, and truly unique. Whether you're experimenting with new combinations or perfecting your favorite strategies, the variety keeps the gameplay dynamic and engaging. On top of that, I've noticed a significant improvement in optimization with recent updates. These enhancements have made the game run smoother and more efficiently, which really elevates the overall experience. If you're a fan of fast-paced, action-packed games that keep you on your toes, this one is definitely worth giving a try. It’s clear that the developers have put a lot of effort into fine-tuning the mechanics, and the results speak for themselves!

Kudos to developers game develops in every update. I bought it in day one and regularly checking the updates and play after every update :)

It blends the better features of genre very well with the never-before-seen enemy spawn mechanics. I enjoyed playing it and almost screamed the first time I won. The game is not difficult, but you should set up your game style well otherwise, you cant do a decent run you shouldn't be too slow or too fast. Also, the times on the leaderboard are shocking, which means I really have a lot more to discover. Also good optimization with my 1660ti 9750h cpu. Hard to find decent running games with my spec nowadays.

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.