Elemental Survivors Review

Approximate amount of time to 100%: 8h
Estimated achievement difficulty: 2/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: Many runs, but you can’t call those playthroughs 😛
Is there a good guide available: You don’t need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: No
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: No
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: No
Does difficulty affect achievements: No
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No

The wonderful women from Samobee Games did it again! They made another awesome game that doesn’t only looks great but is also a lot of fun. As a kid of the 90s, Elemental Survivors has so many small and big things that give me a nostalgic feeling. It already starts when the game starts up and you see to the side of the menu a GameBoy and a mini-disk player. But also a screen that totally looks like an old-school game magazine.

The art style you’ll see in the runs are more like an old-school RPG, back in the SNES time. With party members following you over a map. However, on this map, you fight the enemies, instead of just traveling and having an annoying screen shift to a fight scene. I really love many Bullet Heaven games and this is definitely one of them. It is in early access and the map shows already other regions that will come in the future. So I’m sure there will be a lot more added to this gem during its time in Early Access. And I love that, I couldn’t stop playing so I’m sure I’ll be addicted again when more content drops.

It has not only the art style of old-school RPGs, but also some of the mechanisms like unlocking equipment, getting more party members who will fight for you, and completing quests for each map (aka fighting the different bosses on each map). I kinda hope we will see some sort of side-quests menu that will give you a reward as in some money or something like that for doing tasks outside of defeating the bosses. I have no idea if they have any plans like that, but I think it would fit the theme that is going on. like some sort of bulletin board with random/weird side quests, that have nothing to do with the “main quest” because when did a side quest in those old-school games have anything to do with the main quest??

I did play this one on my Steam Deck and it did run so smooth. I was even surprised it didn’t even heat up my Steam deck which so many other (Bullet Heaven and non Bullet Heaven) games do because of the share amount of enemies and stuff going on on the screen. I’m very impressed that the Steam Deck didn’t get hot at all. And it isn’t bad that other Bullet Heavens do this to the Steam Deck but the bigger surprise it was Elemental Survivors didn’t have this effect on my Decky.

The achievements in this game are not grindy and are just a lot of fun to hunt down. I love that they only added the achievements for content that is currently in the game. so you can 100% the game with the content there is at the moment you’re playing this wonderful game. It has mostly achievements for finishing all the quests for each available map, unlocking new characters, and getting some of the weapons to max level. I love that for unlocking some characters you have to get a specific item or go there with a specific character. and they don’t make a secret about that, it is just in the achievement description so you know how to unlock that new character. There are also achievements for playing around with the music options that Elemental Survivors offers.

I had so much fun playing Elemental Survivors and I can’t wait to see what the future holds in stock for this wonderful wife/wife development team. It talks about summons and mounts in the Early Access information and I’m excited to see those!

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