izigame.me

Honestly, I wish I liked this game, but unfortunately it really doesn't feel fun.
Maybe I have an issue with how most of the perks have downsides which make them almost negatives, maybe it's how on trying to get 6/6 you need to follow an exact formula otherwise you fail, maybe how it's the fact that A lot of the buildings seem like traps to pull a gotcha over the players. In any case I really wish I liked this game more, genuinely, but this really is not for me.
Lets start with the positives. The Art style is a low poly, cartoon-ish, jam which really works quite well. Whoever did the art and 3d side nailed it right on the head and it looks great without ever tiring out.
The sound is alright, I wouldn't say particularly stunning but it does it's job without outstaying it's welcome. I just wish that there was a bit more of a pop to things audibly.
The concept is a great idea! 3D Kingdom with roguelike elements and perks is baller and I'm surprised no one has done anything like this before. But unfortunately this is where the downside begin for me.
The tutorial felt like it did a great job of explaining the mechanics of the game, though as a small note I feel like the PC control scheme is horrendous, which likely impacted my enjoyment of the game. I don't think I should have to use left shift, ctrl, or alt when I have the rest of the keyboard and my right hand available. Maybe that's just me, because it seems to work for a lot of other people.
The gameplay is actually quite simple, and that works in favour of the game in most cases but unfortunately I found that I wasn't engaged after completing the tutorial area. For me that's a bit of an issue, because I'm expecting the rest of the game to follow suit, so after seeing the 6 quests to be completed I decided to try and complete them all in one go.
This is where pain begins.
I found very quickly that if you don't follow an exact formula you will not get anywhere far, which unfortunately means that the perk system stopped being fun ways to alter your game play and more mandatory good and bad stats you are required to have to complete the mission (especially if you only have access to one, such as the beginning of the game).
This also couples with the idea that your economic buildings don't produce anything the night they are destroyed, which again sounds like a great idea on paper, but in reality (for challenge mode) means that a single field going down kneecaps your power curve to the point that you are nigh on guaranteed to lose on one of the problem waves (providing your king doesn't die when kiting the enemies away which really doesn't tether for long enough).
I think this brings me to the overall problem I have with this game. Losing doesn't feel fun.
I know that's supposed to be the point, but when I play a game with rogue like element I'm expecting losing to be part of the formula, and if it's expected then I'm expecting some level of fun to arise out of it. Take slay the spire for example (not a fair comparison I know, but I can't really think of a similar game that I've played. This game is genuinely quite unique.), dying is an expected part of the process which means even on long runs it's fast and painless and super simple to get right back into the swing of things. In this game, dying is followed by a 10 second respawn timer (which is a surprisingly long period of inaction). This dying often leads to destroyed buildings, which as I mentioned earlier on early levels means a guaranteed loss. And the game over screen, feels like it takes too long after all of the other shenanigans that you've likely went through before this point. It wouldn't be a bad thing, if I could skip the loss screen but unfortunately I've not been able to. Maybe I wasn't pressing the right buttons, but the game's been conditioning me to only care about the left shift, ctrl & alt.
If you enjoy the game, all the more power to you, and genuinely a round of applause to the devs because it's clear you've put in a lot of great work. But I don't think this game quite lives up to the expectations I was hoping it would be from the screen shots.
Tl:dr - The game's idea is briliant, and the polish is great. But I don't quite think that the execution is quite there. I wish I could put in a mixed review but I'm forced to pick between a positive or negative.