But you're still hungry.

Roguelite spinoff of Callisto Protocol. Like Hades but with more time pressure and mild “pvp” with other characters trying to escape.

You play as a prison guard trying to escape the outbreak, so the enemies and zones are the same as in CP. You have a gun (initially pretty much a shotgun), a baton (or other melee prison weapon), a GRP, and a kick (I pretty much never used the latter two because why would you use your GRP when you can shoot or dash). Rooms give you either one of the 3000 currencies in the game or 3 upgrades with the same theme, of which you can choose 1. (The theme is known when you enter the room.) The music and art are great. I like the comics theme and how the game takes itself much less seriously than CP. I also like that the framework is you being observed by a security camera (doubtless if I keep playing I’ll have to confront the observer) and that every run is with a different security guard, who can fight their predecessor if they choose.

Unlike Hades, there’s not that much story besides your interactions with other escapees, since you presumably you’ve already played CP. However, there’s enforced time pressure because there’s only one escape pod, so you have to race and occasionally fight the other escapees, and the game can introduce random hazards by saying that the other escapees are hindering you. One of my main complaints about the game is that fighting the escapees is so different in rhythm than regular monsters — one enemy who spends all their time dashing around like a maniac and occasionally tries to shoot you in a big cone, and there’s no environmental hazards you can exploit.

The roguelite aspect is that you can upgrade your skills and get new weapons, etc., but for some reason every kind of upgrade has a different kind of currency, so you have to keep making choices between getting like 5 of one currency and 5 of another...there’s also credits for buying things within runs...it seems really unnecessary. I’ve just been choosing contraband unless I’m working towards a suit upgrade.

My other main complaint is that the effects in the game feel very similar and I don’t see the potential for crazy synergies that rely on doing more damage/debuffs based on existing effects. What’s the point of having shock and ignite and rot and ...? I can see myself getting more powerful via grinding out more contraband and suit upgrades and stuff, but not by getting lucky during a run. (I did quite like the assault rifle full automatic mode.)

Finally, it’s really hard to heal in this game...which is bad for me because I tend to be cavalier about damage until I’m on the wire, and then I magically get through like 5 rooms without damage. You can heal only from health boosters and shops that maybe give you the opportunity to buy healing, which come quite infrequently imo. You don’t heal up after fighting past selves, bosses, or other escapees, which really reduces my desire to do any of those.I feel like the game relies much more on upgrades than other roguelites I’ve played.

OK update: later skills include the ability to get more HP from completing rooms and upgrades. Also, eventually you’re supposed to unredact all the information for each person (this takes many trips to the computer rooms), then kill them to get their fingerprint, then escape. Full disclosure I did not read anyone’s file, I just hit unredact, exited, and ran to the door. If you do it for everyone, then you can play as the watcher, who unlocks the vault and finds another vial with the virus. Then you can choose whether to be the watcher or the guard, and whoever wins that fight escapes with the vial. Again, it’s clear this game is very much about grinding through many runs...I don’t intend on doing that, but I suppose it was fun while it lasted.

Incidentally, on the bosses: the first boss has a charge, ground slam, projectiles, and the thing where he hits the ground and then a wave comes at you. The second boss can vanish underground; in my opinion it’s by far the easiest, since it’s easy to dodge its tentacles. It does have a move where it sets up a cage and you have to break out, but again, that just takes time. The third boss is a crane being controlled by one of the zombies; it has one arm that rotates in a big circle around it, one laser pointer that follows you, and two of the sides of the crane are replaced by rollers (so avoid them) and change over time. Also, sometimes it spews out the vision-blocking smoke and sometimes it launches a barrage of missiles. It’s kind of frantic, but for me the easiest strategy was to hit one of the unprotected sides, dash away from the laser pointer, and also escape to the edge of the map during the missile barrage. For these three bosses I think it’s pretty clear how to take minimal damage. Now the last boss...this guy starts out not too bad — first with lots of laser fire that you can’t just use your melee weapon to clear. If you get too close to him, he’ll melee you. He will also sometimes boomerang his baton and send out these floating lightning balls. Also, one strip of the floor will electrify periodically, which thankfully you can fix by hitting a control at the end of the strip. Now the real issue is what happens at lower health — he’ll use his version of the atom beam, which is like 12 radial copies of an extremely wide beam that he will rotate and move around...also, he’ll use a big kinetic hammer to smash the floor (fine) and set down lightning fields which will send out a wave with staggered timing (not fine). Also, he will send out pulses of these really big circular orbs that you thankfully can cancel with a melee weapon, but boy, those things are big and I always get hit by them. I guess that they designed the boss so you have to facetank him, since he is the last boss, but...really guys???

I was initially skeptical of the slower weapons but I have to say that the kinetic hammer is actually great because of how wide and aggressive it is. Likewise the mortar backpack seems hard to control, but it damages everyone, even enemies with shields, and the damage is so high that you really can just fire huge projectiles and then relax as you reload because enemies will die after eating only 1 or 2 of them. I also didn’t use the GRP at first, but after a run where I got shred on it, I realized that it is very useful for preventing enemies from retaliating as you aggress them + it can toss enemies over ledges.