20 Minutes Till Dawn Review (spirit69)
It's not a bad survivors game, but given that there are a lot better alternatives out there, I do not recommend it.
Pros:
* solid game with well made menus, sound, graphics. No technical issues.
* many things (weapons, general character upgrades, and new characters) to unlock
* works great on steam deck
Cons:
* Way too grindy, it takes ages to unlock things and upgrades are very minor. This means there is very little feeling of progression, and all the games are very similar. There is not really a feeling of "wow, that new upgrade pushed this run so much forward compared to the last one"
* upgrades complement certain other upgrades (preferential combinations), but once more not by a whole lot. The whole game is very linear compared to Vampire Survivor's exponential feeling.
* The art style seems nice at first, but the limit of 3 colors means that the game quickly becomes very hard to parse, and it's a visual mess. Especially annoying is that stuff like the dragon egg or other friendly summons that stay close to you look a lot like enemies.
It's a shame that it overstays its welcome by a lot due to the very slow progression. I would have loved to finish it once or at least see more of the characters and weapons, but it's too repetitive to play it for more than 10 hours. And I can tell tell that it's still a long and boring way of trying over and over again until I can afford to unlock them, or get enough permanent upgrades to get to a end-game new stage of the game, in case something like that even exists.
After writing this review and thinking more about the game, I would even go as far to say this is a rogue-like done wrong: people do not want to play exactly the same stuff over and over again. They want to see something, and if only a little bit, new in every run, or at least every 5 runs. Total: 6.5/10