izigame.me

20XX was a charming enough proof of concept that mostly struggled to me in regards to having messy design in many bosses and the overall roguelike item structure. It was a game that had some very cool and fun components and an obvious love for the Mega Man X series, but I think wouldn't quite be super noteworthy and certainly had a bit of lacking polish around all the edges.
30XX is the hydrogen bomb to 20XX's coughing baby. It's a beautiful testament to the skill of honing your craft as a developer and has been handled amazingly from it's Early Access launch to the current 1.1 release that added back a pair of challenge characters. The bosses, the levels, the visuals, the music - everything comes together almost flawlessly in that perfect way that lets you imagine that this was the game 20XX was meant to be.
Each stage has such a lovingly created mix of gimmicks, enemies, and tileset details details that set it apart from the 4-stage situation of it's predecessor. Ace and Nina have received huge overhauls mechanically to be much more interesting as individual characters like 20XX's Drake and Hawk, and the items and decision making are all vastly more interesting to the point where this game genuinely succeeds as a roguelike to me instead of just being a great not-mega man game. The ending and final bosses are much more satisfying (and also completely ball-busting in true roguelike fashion), and the game even has a number of secrets from more detailed lore to other bits I'd rather not spoil that leave plenty to discover even after you limp your way across the finish line for the first time.
Just about the only problem I have is one that is almost intrinsic to the game to the point where I don't have a good means of addressing it other than "it is what it is" for the most part. It's that the game's various random elements like elite enemy spawns and boss movesets all have to scale to compete with the player as the game goes on, but it gets incredibly messy and often times has very weird or unfair setups with elite types whose placements feel poorly thought out compared to their weaker counterparts and leave very little room to not take damage. Also, the stage 9 boss is a mess. I think the stage 10 bosses are all generally easier for me to deal with because they feel like they have real attack patterns reminiscent of a real mega man boss vs eleanor's consistent vomit of permanent projectiles as that fight goes on.
Once again though, to remove these things would be making the game easy in the face of the sheer amount of power and options the player has access to towards the end of a run, and is that really a good idea? To limit both sides would partially violate the roguelike ethos in my mind, and to be perfectly honest, winning in this game is still a skill issue, it's just that not getting hit is a significantly bigger and more difficult ask.
9/10 but if they continue to push great updates like 1.1 to add even more meat onto this game and maybe find an elegant solution to the messiness I think I'm comfortable calling this a low-profile indie masterpiece.