Kill The Climbers

Pretty fun and simplistic rogue like. The game play and meta progression feels satisfying. Good mix of tower defense like automation and skill with the active abilities! The game only includes the first mountain with the second mountain still in development, but there's still a pretty good amount of content for the price. Excited to see where the devs go with this!!!

Kill The Climbers is a very simplistic, old school, pick-up and play style of game with mechanics that are a little rough around the edges. As the game is in early access, it would be best to address these concerns while building upon what makes the game fun. I will attempt to illuminate my experience to the masses so that they may continue to build on my feedback.

Pros:

Progression: The game is built around the idea of meta progression. You are very unlikely to complete level 1 on your first attempt and will likely take a number of tries to even see the boss until you have purchased upgrades using coins earned from playing the levels. I consider this a good thing, as it adds a sense of satisfaction to getting just a little bit further than you did on previous attempts and pads out the experience while rewarding you for each attempt. Better yet is that the upgrades are both optional and you personally get to choose what to upgrade. I would argue this is the best part of the game.

Enemies: You will encounter a variety of climbers each attempting to reach the mountain peak. Some are basic who take very little damage and climb slowly while others are just upgrades to the basic climbers. Where the game gets really interesting is just how many varieties of climbers you will encounter who specialize in certain aspects of climbing. Like being very fast but die in a single hit or ones that are significantly bulkier but climb at a snails pace. Everything to your average joe to literally flying supermen. The devs put in solid work to make each individual climber unique.

Art: You have to have an appreciation for 8-bit art and that can be tough unless you grew up in the 90's. But there is a charm that is absolutely unrivaled by these kinds of sprites. This is more of a bias than anything but the sprites are all very charming and full of life.

Cons:

The Yeti: For being the face of the game, I regret to inform that the Yeti is useless... If it's not, then I don't know what I was doing wrong. It should be automated the moment it is summoned and it should be an absolute terror, tearing apart every climber it comes across as opposed to chucking snowballs. Worst mechanic in the game.

Controls: I has some assistance learning the games controls. With that being said, I have always had trouble following directions and generally follow a trial and error way of learning video games. One important critique is adding some kind of slow down effect after upgrading in the middle of the level. Those few seconds of being thrown back into the game can cost you. Once you know what you're doing, it's fine... Until you realize that most of what you're doing is...

Learning Automation: This is hands down the worst part of the experience. Once it becomes obvious that all you have to do is hold your mouse at the peak and let it rain rocks on everything and occasionally cause an avalanche in order to win. The game becomes much more tedious and tiresome. The game will try to convince you it values strategy and quick wits, but it doesn't. I believe this could be remedied by changing the way some of its mechanics are handled or even add in new mechanics.

EX:
- Making the wind sweep from one side of the screen to the other.
- Adding cool downs or limitations to all attacks.
- Having the options to purchase additional traps for a more tower defense like experience.
- Adding additional peaks to defend.

Automation can be a necessary and good choice mechanic at times, but the more something is automatic, the less I'm actually required to play and therefore the less I want to play. This needs more work than anything.

Overall a decent experience but I encourage you to try the game for yourself and give your own feedback so that the developers can work to make the game better.

Good retro pixel graphics, pretty fun and tight gameplay, catchy music, and overall good gameplay loop. Fun game!