izigame.me

Ehhhhh. Mid to bad at the moment.
All the axolotols being different is made as a big selling point, but, no. They're not different, they're all just skins that you then literally feed resources to to get a known result out of, so that, if you're unable to figure out which gun archetype/base ability (or Type)/added ability combination you like best within the first few runs you're gonna do that feeding over and over again... To no avail because each zone has its own food resource, and you're gonna be stuck with leaves if you can't even make it out of the forest.
Oh boy those first few runs, though. You're ENTIRELY gated by beating the first boss before the roguelike-item-unlocker pops up, WHO IS NOT THE WEAPON MERCHANT NOR THE META MERCHANT, THAT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE, you'll see the same six weapons dropped at random (if you didn't select an archetype), and all you'll get for ingredients is leaves. You'll also probably wonder where the items are, and you won't know until you go out of your way into a star-marked room to get one. That's not good. Roguelikes are built on dynamic in-run combos, or at least the ones with longevity are (stares directly at Inkbound and Zigguraut 2) , and this one's already thrown that out the window. Healing? HP ups? Yep, seperate rooms. Yes, you have to choose between them... IF THEY COME UP, they're not guaranteed.
So, we now come to the part that really nails the "mid" aspect of the game. Repetition. If you can't beat the first boss with any of the six findable weapons, then you're just stuck pointlessly grinding leaves with only the AK as a starter and nothing else, as the other meta-concept, which is... Affection, isn't based on how you do in a run, it's instead based in caring for each individual lotl-skin once every attempt, then denying them their growth and feeding that affection to a crystal that can give you certain meta upgrades for said drained affection, but once it's done, they then can't have their affection raised for 3 attempts, then you can start raising their affection again, but, again. It has nothing to do with run performance and everything to do with just dying, so, if dying fast becomes a strat to speedrun those upgrades, this is why. Basically, meta-progression has nothing to do with the runs outside of finding more skins to eke up how much affection you get per run or getting diamonds once you beat the forest boss, which is... again, mid, as their rooms aren't guaranteed to show up during a run, and they seem to be distributed through the different levels, so, you'll be max-capped on this if you loop too many times without defeating the moustache crab, and the diamonds will have no value until you do.
After that, you get the meta-item unlocker and discover the other thing to randomly grind up through only challenge rooms and boss kills: Diamonds. They're not in any other room, and, again, their rooms aren't guaranteed to show up aside from killing bosses, so, item variety is locked behind THIS grind as well as the other one. Repeat for after killing the junkyard boss, too, since the weapon-unlocker is the exact same, and uses the same currency.
At the point where I had to get/had gotten past two bosses, I just stopped. By that point you have only 4 of the 8 different starting guns available, but only the shotgun and ak are actually viable, the tiny pistol will give you arthritis (as will the other pistols aside from the laser one) through having to spam single-clicks, and the laser one is just plain weak. How did I determine viability? Easy, Your enemies walk toward you typically slowly, shoot maybe one bullet or a spread, and you can dodge or slash the bullets away, but, uh... The dev forgot to tune it so that the low damage of pistols would still work in zone 1, which, it doesn't at all. If you use one of the weak weapons, all those single bullets, spreads, and quick bullets will all get fired at random, very near eachother meaning you can't actually dodge through it, and since the melee starter isn't available even after beating the junkyard boss.... You'd have to get the melle archetype, but, the sniper is the real one you're gonna want at this point, so.... yyyeah you see, right? Another point of lack of variety. If a weapon isn't effective enough, nobody's gonna use it, so you effectively only have 2 starting weapons to choose from.
Time to mention abilities, traits, and archetypes, oh boy... By zone 2 you will have a grand total of 3 options for the base of your skin's powers: The same as the starting one or slower but has two starting shields, and for your active that takes forever to charge... A decoy. That's all you can get by zone 2, but, the thing is, the future ones don't look good at all, except for maybe the item creation one. Not good, and once again, variety's denied. As for archetypes, WELL. You know of the starters already, but what if I said you only get 1 side weapon slot? You might panic and wonder how the hell. The answer is buffing the drop chance of a certain kind of weapon through an archetype... Costing another only-appearing-in-rooms currency, which is cookies. You should know which one goes with which ability and which passive by finishing zone 2, so.... Once again, you choose once and then forget about it. Assumedly it's permanent for that one axolotol, but has to be ground again for a seperate lot'l if you decide it's not good.
Then, the least-affecting part of this game: the "jokes" and humor it's going for. It's almost 2000s humor, but, from someone who's from now, the 2020s, and as a result, it feels stiff and forced. Even the humorous viciousness of the axolotls are just kinda... normal, now. At the same time, though, it's lowkey enough to be completely ignored, which is why it doesn't really matter all that much, but does work against itself if you are bothered by it... (To give an example, the second boss makes a joke about DMCAs, which.... If someone else did it, might be clever, but here? It's irrelevant because the boss doesn't look even close to the funny-nod-named boss, and does nothing spoof-ful that might relate in any way to its namesake joke. Ho hum.)
All of this from only 2 hours. Oh boy. Let me just say: There were other ingredients available in the forest in the demo, and there were more starting weapons and the unlockers, except for the affection one, were also available immediately. Had that stayed, this might have turned out just a little bit better.
There is a roadmap however, so, maybe there's still hope for this title. As of right now, though.... 2/10. There's no REAL variation aside from the room-randomness and randomly dropped weapons (until you get an archetype, that is), which maybe shouldn't be (look to Inkbound for how to put guaranteed and random rooms together, seriously, then balance the weapons so they're all viable yet different... Like Zigguraut 2, or many other roguelikes that have many/genuinely different weapons... Remnant 2 is a recent example of this, and Roboquest is a future one.) , then increase how much meta-resource you get somehow, and just rework the affection completely, make it based in something you do in-run and not to do with dying and the empty husks that are the lotl skins. Maybe then it'll improve.