Swarm Survivor: Endless Siege

Achievement Hunters

You can complete the achievements in under 10 hours if you focus on the game entirely not using the idle functionaltiy at all

This review made when I not only 100% all achievements but achieved maxing all Swarm Growth Passive Upgrades & completed all planets & difficulties

What is This Game?

A central tower defense game where you have to fend off against waves of enemies, after you earn enough experience, you level up then you can choose a skill, attack style or bonus effects to help you last longer & eventually beat the planets

What to Expect

• Auto/Idle: If enabled, it will choose a select option in a session after 4 seconds has elapsed
• Swarm Guard: 7 different swarms to choose from with a variety of stats & bonuses each comes with, intially locked until you meet the requirements by beating specific planets to gain access to them
• Wave Speed Multiplier: You have 1x/2x/3x/4x available at the very start
• Skill Abilities: You will be able to choose 3 immediately, with a 4th afterwards at some point, a 5th can be chosen with a specific Swarm Guard, skill abilities all have a max level of 20 of course each level having it's own stat bonuses with a range of different types of categories & effects
• Swarm Growth: This is your passive upgrades section at the front main menu which has a variety of upgrades to make you more powerful during your sessions you earn swarm crystals from planets & endless by defeating each enemy & bosses
• Enhancement Chance for Session Selections: The selections can appear as higher quality giving you more levels for a single option, for example, instead of getting just a level 1 up on a selection, you can get 2 & up to a total of 4 levels, but this requires you to upgrade the options in the Swarm Growth Upgrades Menu to increase the chances which has 3 options of levels from x2/x3/x4 chance upgrades
• Storage: As far as I'm aware it's infinite
• Planets: 15 planets total, all planets have a time limit of 20 minutes to survive with increased difficulty for each progressive one, the first 9 planets have a single difficulty, with progressive relic, gems & material increased chances, where relics of Legendary the max can be achieved on the 9th planet, upon reaching the 10th planet onwards, they have up to 3 difficulties with increased rewards as well as from the 10th planet onwards you can earn the best relic quality of Mythic
• Relics: Comes with stat affixes tied to them, the higher the rarity of the relic the more affixes it can hold up to 5 for mythic red
• Mutation Stat Bonuses: Allows you to reroll the stats on relics, up to a maximum mutations can be initiated & you 'can' reroll each stat & not locked out after choosing one, which in most games usually only allow you to reroll only one stat not multiples, so that's a plus, the highest rarity of a stat you choose to reroll, will be of that rarity or lower you can choose from
• Presets: In the relic equip menu, you can select a preset loadout, letting you manage up to a total of 3 presets to quickly switch between the type of builds you can have & easily switch between them at any time in the relic equip menu
• Gems: Relics can have up to 2 gem slots which gems can then be slotted with various bonus & effects, rarity & stats vary, I suggest to collect them all
• Material: These are specifically for enhancing relics or mutating relics stats
• Ability Codex: At the top at the main menu screen will show & tell you about all the abilities you can find in a session, clicking them will give more details of either max count or even scrolling down to review levels of skill abilities
• Bless, Exclude & Skill Refresh: These affect a session selection of bonuses, Blessing an option gives it a greater chance of appearing more often, Exclude prevents an option from appearing entirely & Skill Refresh allows you to reroll your options entirely, the quantities of these options can be increased in the Swarm Growth Upgrades & Skill Refreshes can also be found on relics
• Potions: You can find them in a session at the bottom will be some icons & a hotbar where when hovered over state its effect & quantity with a number under that item that you have available to use

The Bad

[list][*]ENDLESS, It's Not: Every planet is capped at 20 minutes, endless mode is capped at 60 minutes & there is no auto-restart feature

[*]Relic Appraisal & Grinding: You can't sort in the appraising section not by any means, so it makes it a long tedious process if you've got lots of relics to look over

[*]Auto/Idle Issue: Blessing/Excluding while the timer reaches 0 will Bless/Exclude that selection then the timer will go into the negatives & never choose an option

[*]Mouse Hard to See: Despite specific mouse features with different colors & even outlines, among all the particles on the screen, it's still hard to locate the mouse effectively, making it difficult to navigate the hotbar of potion effects

[*]No Quick Hotkey for Potion Use: No easy hotkey for using potions

[*]Planet 10 Difficulty: Going from Planet 9 to Planet 10 difficulty scaling, you'll basically hit a wall which will halt progress until you grind a bit to enhance your relics as well as finding mythic relics even if you lose on Planet 10, you can still get drops for mythic rarity

[*]Mutation Relic Rarity Limitations: The rarity of the stat you choose to reroll can only be that rarity or lower, never higher

[*]Auto/Idle No Priority Selection: While idle works during sessions, the effectiveness is lacking, it doesn't prioritize selecting anything that you have added blessing to nor does it prioritize the ability to get enhanced selections of x2, x3 & x4 level upgrades & can still select single level options

[*]No Auto Restart a New Run: After a completion of a session, you must select to continue that returns you to the main menu, if only there was an option to loop planets without stopping, truly idling or in endless as well

[*]Stimulant, Potion & Fortifier: This all pertains to the same feature which I found confusing from different sources of the game, which should probably be modified to describe the same function from each of their sources[/last]

My Favorite Build

Intelligence/Skill Ability: Swarm Guard Riftfang Nock; +1 projectile to main skill, hits cause small AOE, along with my 3 main relics that all have skill cooldown & skill projectile amounts all of which are all enhanced to the max level of 30, all 4 relics also have the highest damage possible from all 8 gems slotted

My Four Favorite Skill Abilities: Whirling Bone Spike which is great for close & mid range all around & pierces through all enemies, Mycelium which is perfect for close range defenses at really fast rates, Cosmic Shockwave which projectiles are flown across the screen & pierces through all enemies & lastly Spore Puffball well designed for full screen bombardment which spawns entities around the surrounding area & then they shoot spore projectiles of their own which can seemingly blanket the entire screen if you have enough projectile count, skill cooldown ect.

Glad to finally see it released. Having a blast

Fun, promising mechanics and a fresh take on the survivor-like formula. The mid-to-late game opens into a smooth, satisfying horde-mowing loop—great stress relief. Desktop mode fits perfectly: even with huge enemy counts and the game running at higher speed, it stays smooth.