izigame.me

I was originally going to give Void Scrappers a positive review, confident that the 30-50% of a game on display here was clearly in Early Access. Imagine my surprise when double checking the store page revealed that this was a full release, last updated a month ago with a capstone "mastered the game" character. I can't see the future so I'll have to review what we actually have.
There's less story here than bone reading a single sentence item description in a Souls-like, so moving on. Pick a pilot, dodge enemies, level up and get your damage checked by the frankly awful last boss. Pilots seem to have major gimmick differences, some thoughtful, some busted, others absurdly bad and not balanced in the least. Since the game is so simplistic and the enemy roster is lame even for a Vamp Survivors-alike there's ultimately no difference. Stack damage, sometimes you have a useless bonus and sometimes a busted +damage one. A shame post-release support has mostly been roster additions.
When you spawn you see the affiliation of the enemy sprite set but all enemies are 100% identical across factions, all enemies are 99% identical in function and behavior aside from a few lackluster projectiles identical in function to spawning tiny enemies, all bosses except the last are 100% identical in being meat blocks that chase you but move slower than you do. I mean the Dinosaur in a UFO does it too but he also spawns the only new enemies in the game, who are slightly more aggressive than the rest.
Yes, most Vampire Survivor games do the same in enemy design of identical blobs that approach you but they work in more enemy variation, boss variation, and most importantly even if the enemy pool has limited behaviors they go overboard on interesting and varied things the player themselves can do. The first two stages of early access Vamp has more surprises than the Void roster. I'd say the resolution is far too small as more than 75% of the hits I take playing the game come from an enemy spawning from off-screen directly in front of me at full speed. This seems to be the only danger in the game.
There are positives. The player ships control very well, weaving between enemies feels good and the Dash mechanic is a pretty innovative addition that helps differentiate flying a ship vs the other Vamp Survivor clone set-ups, a strength of the sci fi setting. Part distance creating dash, i-frame applying dodge roll and offensive or pick-up grabbing super dive, it really nails a feel of hitting the boosters. I wish VS had a lot more touches and things to do with mobility, it'd hugely separate it from the crowd in a good way. The OST has a few bangers though they repeat quickly and as dull as things are I do find the graphics appealing, my heart always warming to a chunky pixels 16 bit space ship sprite. Some of the weapon designs and upgrade paths are pretty clever but they're not really worth exploring since there are very obvious meta options. Since things aren't balanced you often make your upgrade pool weaker with every non-damage/meta option you unlock. VS has so little game to offer but manages to commit most of the classic roguelite design errors.
The negatives outweigh the positives and the absence of content outweighs everything. The idea that VS released in 1.0 seems like a joke. One "stage" as an infinite spanning space background with no features, terrain, obstacles, interactables, etc... no planets, asteroids, black holes, stars/suns, comets, things to orbit around, space stations, random occurrences. Just a flat void. The graphics are decent but they're not great, especially when you see details like weapons badly clipping when fired from some ships or the bit where the enemy space ship blob getting big enough makes them jostle in place like traffic jammed bumper cars, makes me laugh every time. The game seems barely able to contain the last boss on the screen and the devs give up if you defeat him, simply spamming more aggressive over-statted ships and virtually freezing scrap gain so you'll eventually die. Of course the ships started blocking each other and I had to stop moving to die. At this level of laziness it would've looked better to throw up A WINNER IS YOU and end the run.
I don't think it helps devs to criticize a game and give the "helpful" advice of "could you make more stuff?" but sadly it's 100% spot on here. It feels like 8bitskull got tired of this game before I did. Maybe if they came back to VS with an ambitious update schedule they could put out the other half of the game but as things are now Scrappers is a hard pass and frankly a throwback to the days of rushed SNES shovelware. $4 isn't a big ask to have a few hours of repetitive fun but the Vampire Survivors clone genre is already huge and I've already played three other heavy hitters out of dozens offered. Why settle for the bare minimum?