izigame.me

Needs Content
On principle and for the first 3-4 hours this game has a satisfying loop. Beyond this, you soon get the sinking feeling that there's not a great deal there.
2 classes for a game where you spend 90% of your time raiding as that class?
7-9 traps (depending on your definition) in a game entirely reliant on traps.

This game has two parts, building and raiding. Let's talk about raiding first.


Raiding

What is it?
You get resources by attempting to steal X McGuffin from Y map. The "Y map" being one that is user created with traps and enemies designed to stop you.
What's fun about it?

Made by other people, so every map is different.
There are three difficulties of map, so you can decide how difficult you want to make it for yourself.
You can team up with a friend.
You can give accolades to levels. "Fun", "Ingenious", "Brutal", "Artistic"

What's not fun about it?

You're forced to raid repeatedly for resources, doing 30+ levels just for one level up, which often is not enough to afford one upgrade.
User maps converge on the same 8-10 strategies, so despite the fact every level is unique, you soon find most of them the same.
Due to the way the level difficulty ranking works often difficulty level is erratic from level to level.
Some kill strategies are impossible to beat without having to get a specific upgrade or gear. Meaning you choice of where you spend your hard-earned resources is limited.
Every level has a "bonus" cache, which is in a random place. So you are obligated to hunt this one block down every level. It might be trapped. It might be blocked off. Or it might be inside the dungeon. You can never tell.
The accolades are not really granular enough. The very nature of ingenious means that when you first start out, you're likely to learn some strategies that first seem ingenious, but after you see it 36 times it's not ingenious anymore. Brutal is strange because it's literally a difficulty at level selection. An "Artistic" level is just rare to see. Most people don't want to spend resources on making their level pretty when it can be spent on traps.


Building

What is it?
You in turn build your own deathtrap dungeons for other users to attempt to raid. You get resources for each player you kill.
What's fun about it?

You can watch recordings of people doing your maps! Watch them succeed... or fail!
Your map can "level up" by killing players, and getting more space to place traps and blocks.

What's not fun about it?

The resources you get from dead players are laughably meager, to the point where it's often not worth the loading time to go into the map to pick it up.
The amount of blocks and traps is too bare-bones for any complex or meaningful strategy. You have the hidden block surprise trap, you have trap or enemy spam, and you have enemy ambush. Those are the main three.
Unlocking traps and enemies scales with each unlock, meaning you have to fork out more and more time and resources just because you want more traps, as opposed to a new gun.
You have to "refill" your map to keep it operating. Meaning you have to do 30-40 raids just to resupply your level for half a day.
Even if your level is active, there's no guarantee that other players will play it.
Because both building blocks, and traps are tied to the same map limit you either have to choose to make your map look pretty, or fill it with traps. This is especially noticeable with the "small" size levels, which genuinely don't have enough of a building cap to do anything other than a blocky corridor filled with traps. 90% of small levels are holes in the ground.
The replay system is utterly broken. It's incredibly laggy to watch and often reports 0 deaths, when actually a player may have died multiple times.
Coop players can revive one another infinitely. Meaning one can stay at the start and wait while the other activates all the traps. If they die: revive, repeat. Whereas single players have to restart and have all the traps reset. You get resources from their deaths, but it cheapens the whole challenge aspect you get from building.
You get points for accolades given to your map, but everyone has their own interpretation so it's basically the same as getting a random bonus with no real feedback.
Big maps get played less (presumably because players want shorter, quicker, and easier maps), so getting prestige is harder. Large maps also deplete faster; requiring a refill of resources faster, so you end up feeling punished for having a bigger outpost.
Some players get exclusive access to a building theme that allows them to make the walls look almost visually identical to the traps.
Traps are really expensive, and some of them are the equivalent to placing 70 blocks, without trap upgrades. On small maps this may be a third of the size limit for one trap.
Deciding that you want your trap to activate after the McGuffin is stolen contributes towards the space limit.
You have to UNLOCK the ability to have the trap activate after the McGuffin is stolen.



Verdict

The developers are very focused on "creating a balanced player ecosystem". And the way they have gone about it almost seems like they're about to add microtransactions to buy resources at any moment. The whole game feels like it's squeezing you for resources. Forcing you to play as many levels as possible regardless of quality. And to a certain degree this makes sense, they need to maximize the ratio of level plays to levels, otherwise, builders wouldn't get plays on their levels.

I would say I am more of a builder, and usually only sign on to replenish/prestige my levels and watch some replays. But now I think, what's the point? It's getting more and more expensive and I have to sink more and more time just to keep my level active for what, 6 hours?
I don't want to build a kill box, I want to build something fair, fun, and pretty. Yet the current state of the game encourages maximum kill at the cost of all other features.
I don't want to play the 100th "drop bombs on you from above on a ramp" level. I have seen it.
Innovation is already stagnant because the pallet of content is so minimal.

This game feels like early access.

I understand that the developers want to release with less, so it's easier to balance and maintain this "player ecosystem", but honestly I feel this game needed to release with 3x times the content. Whether or not you feel that this game has enough content, as it stands it's gone from an average peak of 3000 concurrent Steam players to 1000. 1/3rd in two weeks. That's 2000 less players that are part of the player ecosystem, playing levels, and giving builders resources. 2000 fewer players innovating and building interesting levels. If the developers really are cautiously trying to optimize the player economy, I'd say they may need to up the ante.

The developers plan to release 1 more trap, class, gun, and map theme in June. I personally feel that's a plaster over a gaping wound.
If that's the rate of content additions, then this game will be prime to pick up on sale after 5 years of content. Who can say if it will survive it that long.
EDIT 18/10: After two "content updates" I signed in to see if things have improved.
- 1 new trap which I can't afford without another 6 hours.
- My outpost only got 4 plays before needing a refill.
- Levelling up the prestige of your outpost still only allows you to add one upgraded trap.
- Higher skill and more tools mean fair levels don't get kills, further encouraging killboxes.
Developers.
This type of game is made for me.
But this game needs more than drip-feed of cosmetics.
It needs doors, timers, traps, block pushers, rotators; mechanics for players to actually play and feed the ecosystem with creative ideas.