Remember 1980s Arcade Shooters? They’re Back, In Roguelite Form

There's a reason games from smaller developers have increasingly embraced roguelite mechanics. The repetitive core progression allows lots of gameplay to be wrung out of the same or similar level structures while still giving players the feeling of progression and empowerment. Huntdown: Overtime, coming soon in early access, is the latest to graft roguelite hooks onto a familiar genre. This time, it's a new take on the classic arcade run-and-gun shooter. And similarly to Absolum, the combination works well, even if I am admittedly starting to feel some roguelite fatigue.Huntdown: Overtime is a sequel to 2020's Huntdown, a stylish dystopian shooter modeled after classic arcade shooters like Contra, ESWAT, or 1988's Robocop. Huntdown used a traditional level-based design, which makes an easy comparison between the two. I may still prefer the original approach for this genre, but the homage to arcades softens its more repetitive nature. Whereas plunking in quarters to play the first stage or two over and over was commonplace in arcades, it doesn't feel all that dissimilar in a roguelite. Like the original, Overtime takes place in a gang-infested, neon-soaked hellhole of a future. It's a vision of the future where all of the big hair and fashion excesses of the 1980s got even more amped up. As a child of the '80s, this is very effective on me: a kid who thought of "gangs" as groups of ruffians with gaudy themes and baseball bats. Overtime nails this aesthetic not only in its visual style, but also in the way it captures this vision of the future that was actually presented in arcade games in that era. Faceless, pixelated mobs of goons prowl the streets, but this time they're accented by a vast array of animations that make them feel more reactive. At one point I kicked a thug away, only to have their body half-hang limply off a fire escape. That attention to detail is a lot more than I had come to expect from a shooter like this and shows a clear focus on modernization.Continue Reading at GameSpot

There's a reason games from smaller developers have increasingly embraced roguelite mechanics. The repetitive core progression allows lots of gameplay to be wrung out of the same or similar level structures while still giving players the feeling of progression and empowerment. Huntdown: Overtime, coming soon in early access, is the latest to graft roguelite hooks…

There's a reason games from smaller developers have increasingly embraced roguelite mechanics. The repetitive core progression allows lots of gameplay to be wrung out of the same or similar level structures while still giving players the feeling of progression and empowerment. Huntdown: Overtime, coming soon in early access, is the latest to graft roguelite hooks onto a familiar genre. This time, it's a new take on the classic arcade run-and-gun shooter. And similarly to Absolum, the combination works well, even if I am admittedly starting…