Create completely ridiculous weapons in survive-em-up roguelite shooter NIMRODS: GunCraft Survivor

NIMRODS: GunCraft Survivor on the surface may look just like yet another survivor-like, but it has captured my total attention in a way not many have been able to. It's just thoroughly great. Note: key provided by Fiveamp.

Much like all the others in the genre that spawned from Vampire Survivors it has the basics: repeated runs where you take down enemies, while you collect little experience orbs to level up. Here though, you're also building a gun as you go through various attachments (that they call augments). What you can end up with is totally ridiculous and I love the way you see your attachments represented in the weapon itself on-screen as you run around. Although I do hope they expand on this visually, as some attachments don't change the look at all. A bit like how Brotato evolves your character's look as you go.

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There's a lot that sets this apart from other games in the genre too that I'll go over a few bits of now. For starters: the level up system. Here it's not completely automatic. When you reach a level up, a pod will drop down you have to run to collect. Even that can be a little challenging at times, due to the amount of enemy swarms you might be dealing with. It's also just a supremely cool idea to have a pod drop down to buff your weapon with some new attachments.

When you die, the weapon you've built won't just vanish either. You go back to your little home base, where the weapon with all the attachments is on the floor. You can pick it up to test it again, or give it to a drone that will follow you around and the drone will level it up exactly how you made it during a run. A really clever idea that gives some extra meta progression to the game. If you decide you didn't like the weapon, you can sell it for some credits towards unlocking more weapons and attachments to use during a run. Or, you can put it on display to swap with the drone later.

The map you drop into also needs actual exploration. You start off with a pretty blank map covered in a shroud / fog of war, which gets revealed as you run around. This exploration stays for your next run too, so you'll know more of where you want to go. As you explore you'll find various new areas with new types of enemies, along with the option to collect blueprints to unlock more weapons and attachments. The map is also pretty darn big.

Trying to get a blueprint is quite difficult too as you need to stand in a specific area around a case, while a percentage ticks up towards 100% where you unlock the blueprint to buy it after a run. But, while you're waiting for the timer, enemies will swarm around you.

Quite a few different enemy types too and some entertaining boss battles as well, with each little boss getting their own fancy little mini-intro to highlight that they've appeared. Like all good survivor-likes, you unlock more of the game as you go. As you defeat these mini-bosses, more doors in the home base will be available to walk through giving you access to more features.

A game that continues to open up the more you play it. Through all the weapons, the attachments, new areas of the map, the drone adjustments and so much more.

Nice and accessible too with options to auto aim, auto fire your main weapon and seperately the underbarrel if needed (so you could auto fire main weapon, and have say a grenade launcher underbarrel set to manual) or you can play it like a proper twin-stick shooter. The option is yours — the perfect balance.

With the Early Access release there's already a lot of weapon types and attachments to try out many combinations with plans to add in more guns, more attachments, more enemies, more minibosses and just a lot more of everything. The developer said the current plan is to continue development in EA for at least a year, and if successful they will continue with post-release updates too.

Once you do die (and you will, a lot) the game over screen gives you a nice amount of details too. Showing off what killed you, how long you lasted, distanced travelled, missions completed and lots more to show off to friends.

It works thoroughly great with Proton on Desktop Linux and Steam Deck. The developer noted they put great effort into ensuring it works well on Steam Deck. While performance in some places could be improved, overall it's great. The only issues on Steam Deck are the black bars at the bottom and top of the screen, hopefully they add the proper aspect ratio to use the whole Deck screen. And some text on items is a little small, so they need some scaling there.

Now if you'll excuse me, duty calls, I'm off for another run in NIMRODS: GunCraft Survivor because it's just that good. It has instantly become my new go-to game for when I need to blast around in something for a while. This will keep your attention for a whole lot of hours if you wish to not only complete the missions to unlock more, but to keep trying out the hundreds of combinations of weapons you can build. Awesome. Go grab it.