izigame.me

20 Minutes Till Dawn is part of several bundles with other "bullet heaven" games, and it very much turns into one of those with some investment in its permanent upgrades and understanding of its upgrade synergies. At the low end however it feels more like the rogue-lites that birthed the former. For one, it's not an auto shooter- you do have to hold down the mouse button to fire your weapon, and you only have one gun. There is auto-reloading, however.
Also, there is demo version called 10 Minutes till Dawn, and I thought that was funny. More importantly, however, progress from 10 carries over into 20.
As one of a range of gun-toting female warriors, including but not limited to a fallen angel, several spellcasters, a bodybuilder, a ninja, a vampire, a yuki onna, an eldritch goddess and a deer antlered-shapeshifter, you must do as the title says and survive 'till dawn against an endless horde of lovecraftian nasties. You also get to choose your starting weapon, though at the beginning you are limited to the aforementioned fallen angel, Shana, and the revolver. Shana has the unique capability to reroll her upgrade choices once per level. The revolver is... workable, but it took several attempts for me to win a run with it, whereas the first unlockable gun after it, the shotgun, I won with on my first attempt.
You earn currency whether your runs are successful or not, and this can be used to purchase new characters, new guns, and permanent "rune" buffs. There are two sets of these runes, "Sword" and "Shield", divided into four tiers, and you can choose one upgrade from each column and tier for eight total. Each has five ranks and once purchase they can be freely swapped out between runs.
2MTD features an escalating difficulty system not unlike that found in the coop roguelite Darksburg- each successful run unlocks a new "Darkness" level, with additional and compounding modifiers. Most of the achievements require you to play through the highest level of 15. By using the shotgun and the second character, Diamond, who starts with the most HP at 7 hearts, it is very possible to, as one of the guides put it, "faceroll your way to Darkness 15." I however sampled each character and gun in turn to get a feel for them along the way. Aside from the revolver, the other weapon I am not sure how to get the most out of yet is the Magic Bow. When i started this review I had reached Darkness 12.
At Darkness 15 the game becomes a traditional roguelite again, and will then proceed to murder you repeatedly until you figure out a good setup and learn how to dodge the unfun second boss of the Forest stage, a charging demonic deer. This boss will end runs on Darkness 0 when you're first starting out, and again at 15 when all bosses get increased attack speed. So far I've only beaten the thing twice, once with Diamond and the shotgun and once with Spark and the revolver, and those both took multiple attempts. I do not care to use the revolver ever again and thankfully I no longer need to for acheivements. Your best hope seems to be to take Haste and Frost Mage upgrades (the community recommends taking Frost Mage every run regardless of setup) and kite like your life depends on it, because it does.
Aside from Shotgun Diamond, there are two other builds favored by guide writers: One is using the Dual SMGs, which can double-proc on-hit effects, with the character Spark, who causes lightning blasts every few shots. This also works for Yuki and likely Scarlett (I did not have the Dual SMGs unlocked when I tried Scarlett and used the Flamegun instead). The other spoken of build is using the unique "Batgun" on Lilith, as the Batgun inherits both summon damage and bullet damage bonuses and Lilith further gets specific bonuses to summons. Summon builds also seem to work for Hina (This is the easy way to get the achievement for not ever firing your gun in a run) and to a lesser extent, Hastur (Her tentacle summons seem to use some summon effects and not others)
Several other reviewers have made jokes about how they've played this game until it was actually 20 minutes until dawn for real, and I can see why. There is something about this title that is more addicting then even other games in the genre. I highly recommend it to any bullet heaven or roguelite fan- just watch out for that bullshit gear check deer boss.