Impaler - Extremely low budget Rogue-lite retro shooter

You are unlikely to have heard anything about Impaler, as well as the creators of this game - Apptivus, although they have experience under their belt.

Looking ahead, I would say that after meeting Impaler leaves behind a feeling of resentment rather than a pleasant impression. It's not often that you come across a game with such solid basic mechanics and such poor content.

Impaler as a retro shooter

If you're not too lazy to watch the trailer, you've already seen almost all the content in the game. Apparently, the success of Vampire Survival keeps Apptivus busy. We've already seen dozens of attempts to break into the tops of Steam and Twitch, of the candidates for the laurels of the best arena Rogue-lite succeeded only Brotato.

Impaler is the same suit, but the bribe is not the role component and builds, but a departure to the shooter mechanics of the nineties, but in a modern way. All the same pixels, eight-bit graphics, but weapons now have scatter, recoil and weight, and bullets and shells have ballistics. Impaler's signature mechanics include only spikes, a feature that refers back to Painkiller with its exotic weapons:

The spikes here act as both a doomsday weapon and an alternative to the rocketjump. On the whole, when it comes to character movements, Apptivus has done a good job of balancing drive and challange: the double jump is useful, but it doesn't make you Sonic with a double-barreled gun, and the cackling cat-hook isn't there at all.

However, Apptivus has questionably balanced the weapon itself by removing the mechanics of running out of ammo, but adding the mechanics of overheating. The result: the initial submachine gun turned out to be the most effective weapon. The farther the weapon unlocks, the more damage it does, but it also overheats faster. High damage gives a slight advantage against strong monsters, but becomes ineffective against a crowd of small creeps. What's the point of swinging if the protagonist gets weaker over time?

The map is another matter. Scale of the place is inordinately smaller than in other arena shooters, but every now and then changes the view by various modifiers. On one level, the map can be pitch black:

The other has circular saws sticking out of the floor. It makes a bit of a difference:

However, the variety of opponents does not shine: just a couple of types of melee monsters, a couple of long-range and very few unique ones. Very little of the Marauder analog from Doom Eternal, for example...

Impaler as Rogue-lite

In terms of roguelite Impaler looks even scarcer. There are no builds in the game, since for each level completed the player is free to choose only from the two bonuses offered:

...The usefulness of the bonuses is highly questionable. Toward the end of the race you might get a bonus to increase your loot, which does not have time to pay off. The success of the party depends on luck. Did not fall out the necessary buffs - it will be harder. The bonuses themselves can not be shuffled, which makes it impossible to any meaningful pumping. Yes, and the coins with which these bonuses are bought, are sometimes obtained at exorbitant cost, which often leads to the death of the protagonist.

Next is the question of meta-progression. Here everything is bad, inadmissible for the rogulite genre. All that remains after unsuccessful races is an unlocked cannon.

But the biggest omission is the lack of choice of difficulty levels and stages. The game is so short and uncomplicated that you can pass it without permanent death, which goes against the basics of the genre.

Is it worth it to buy an Impaler?

But the interesting thing is that all the shortcomings surface only after a couple of hours, and the game costs a measly $2. We recommend buying Impaler only for familiarity, as a platform for future updates. If you're willing to pay two dollars for four hours of fun, Impaler is worth a look.