Collapsed

Behind the times and lacking in its reason, to imply that Collapsed is an exercise in any of its design would also imply it exerted in the first place. Boring gameplay with no feedback, a story simply uninterested in being told, and a visual design too zoomed out to appreciate, it struggles to find reason in a genre that allows you to exist by default.

‎Nowadays I feel like in the time when they made me compete against my swimming partners: I always ended up exhausted, but I enjoyed it... although without a doubt that the latter could not erase my obvious and heartfelt face of tiredness. This will not be an excellent title, it is simply broken in fundamental points that although they are repairable, make the launch experience transform from time to time into a strong migraine.‎

Unfortunately falling victim to the giants of rogue-likes it provided the shoulders for, Collapsed is an entertaining if poorly balanced rogue-like. Solid action and gunplay can only carry you so far when repetition slowly wears away your enthusiasm, and you know that other games in the genre offer so much more in comparison. Collapsed is despairingly trapped under the rubble of those who have surpassed it.

The sci-fi environment piqued my interest, the levelling up system was great, but everything else was nothing out of the ordinary.

Unfortunately, the presentation and strong opening hours are not enough to offset the repetition and grind that comes to dominate the experience if you want to unlock more of the narrative and see the true ending.

Unfortunately, the game's interesting character designs and a decent art style aren't enough to carry it through its mediocre combat, rough audio and low stakes.

Thanks to Collapsed‘s excellent moment-to-moment combat, starting again over and over never feels like a chore. And persistent upgrades alongside a permanent inventory means you constantly feel you’re making progress, even after several dozen premature deaths. It’s just a shame those upgrades aren’t more exciting and rarely make much difference to gameplay. Still, when blasting and slashing through enemies is this much fun, it hardly matters.

Collapsed is a very dull roguelike, with a very high learning curve and performance issues that making playing this (at least in handheld) a lot more frustrating than it should be, while also lacking the magic that make other roguelike games so good. The controls are still very comfy and the action is fine, but there’s really no reason to pick this one up over the many, better roguelikes for less money due to the difficulty balancing and framerate problems, unless you’re really not one to mind attempting things tons and tons of times just to clear one world, and having to grind a lot as a result.

Collapsed is the sort of title that has good ideas but lacks the polish and follow-through to recommend. Some of the issues might be patchable, such as lack of button reassignment, item crafting rework, or painfully-frequent falling into the floors, but fundamentally this lacks what makes the genre itself so enjoyable. The controls feel far too stiff and combat suffers from wild difficulty swings. While the hope of new gear or skills keeps people going, it is not long before even these fall before the general frustration of playing.

Although it isn't much different to your standard twin-stick platform shooter, Collapsed certainly offers some enjoyable roguelike action.