Info about Striving for Light:

Official game description:
Blending the deep buildcrafting of Action-RPGs like **Path of Exile** and **Diablo** with the fast-paced action of roguelite like **Hades**, Striving for Light is an action RPG where you expand and shape a unique infinite skilltree. Battle through dark, ever-changing worlds, collect powerful loot, craft and upgrade weapons to legendary power, and unlock new characters, skills, and weapons as you strive to conquer the darkness.  
*   Dive into a dark, mysterious world filled with danger and a voice-acted story  
*   Explore random generated maps with plenty of world events and secrets to uncover  
*   Level up, utilise and shape a unique random generated and infinite expanding skilltree  
*   Near infinite possibilites of buildcrafting and bring your dreambuilds to life  
*   Master 8 character classes each with their own unique specialisation skilltree  
*   Hunt for randomised loot, craft and reforge weapons to true legendary power  
*   Unlock new skills, weapons, maps and characters  
*   Over 11 unique environments each with unique enemies and bosses to explore  
*   Endgame systems (Rifts, Mapping System, Pinnacle Bosses, Challenges)  
*   Online leaderboards with seasons and private league system  
*   Local-Coop mode  
*   Hardcore and Softcore mode as well as 5 Difficulty Tiers  
*   Hand-drawn world and an 80+ minute soundtrack
Skill system
------------
*   Each run gives you a new unique skill tree to explore  
*   Combine melee, ranged and more, like pet skills, for nearly infinite builds  
*   Dynamic expanding skilltree depending on your skill pathway  
*   Collect skillgems and shape your skilltree: Reconnect, reroll, refund.  
*   Additional meta progression skilltree
Gearing & Crafting
------------------
*   Deep itemisation system  
*   72+ unique weapon bases with randomised stats can be upgraded to legendaries and ascended by crafting  
*   Over 40+ unique trinkets including powerful legendary trinkets  
*   70+ unique skill nodes  
*   8 characters with unique specialisation skilltrees
Combat system
-------------
*   Challenging enemies and boss encounters  
*   Active dual combat system with aim & attack (mouse, keys or controller)  
*   Dynamically switch between melee and ranged weapons during fights  
*   Powerful active abilities like shapeshifting and massive AoE attacks  
*   Dual resource system to manage melee and ranged attacks  
*   Dodge system to evade enemy attacks
Endgame system
--------------
*   Delve deeper into the darkness and face an ever increasing challenge  
*   Infinite expanding map progression system  
*   Rift Endgame system  
*   5 Difficulty Tiers  
*   Add and alter map modifiers to increase the challenge but also your rewards
Seasons & Leaderboards
----------------------
*   Seasonal leaderboards for hardcore and softcore mode  
*   Earn honour points for each run and climb the seasonal leaderboard  
*   Compete in seasonal challenges  
*   Leaderboard for pinnacle boss fight rush  
*   Rift endgame leaderboards  
*   Offline mode
Procedural Generated Worlds
---------------------------
*   Each map layout is procedural generated  
*   Ever changing world events like tower defense, arenas, dungeons, trials, and bossfights  
*   Wisely choose which maps to play and which world events to engage  
*   Hunt for the perfect loot and the ultimate weapons
Leave a Legacy
--------------
*   Craft echo weapons that get added to the lootpool for other players to find  
*   Empower your echoes, design the visual appearance of your weapons  
*   Embed your personal inscription to share your message with other players

Release date: 11 Jul, 2025

Categories: Action RPG, Roguelike, Build Crafting, Character Progression, Procedural Generation, Endgame Content, Cooperative Multiplayer, Resource Management


- Hardware Profile: No data
Feature extractions:
- Community Price: No data
- Playtime Metrics: No data
- Time-to-fun: No data
- Player Archetypes: No data


Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category.
Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews.
What players like:
- Highly enjoyable and addictive (weight 0.99): Players find the game highly enjoyable and addictive, often losing track of time while playing. Its replayability and engaging gameplay loop contribute to a very positive overall experience, making it a worthwhile purchase.
- Dedicated and responsive developers (weight 0.35): The developers are highly praised for their dedication, responsiveness, and consistent efforts in improving the game. They frequently release updates, fix bugs quickly, and actively incorporate community feedback, demonstrating a strong commitment to the project.
- Innovative skill tree and builds (weight 0.34): The game features an innovative and infinite skill tree system that allows for extensive build customization and experimentation. This system, combined with random elements, ensures high replayability and diverse gameplay experiences in each run.
- Unique ARPG/Roguelite blend (weight 0.21): The game successfully blends elements of ARPGs and Roguelites, offering a unique and satisfying experience. It provides the build diversity and horde-fighting fun of ARPGs with the progression and replayability of roguelites.
- Appealing and unique art style (weight 0.18): The game's art style is consistently praised for its unique, charming, and polished design. The visual contrast and diverse environments contribute to an appealing aesthetic that enhances the overall experience.
- Extensive end-game content (weight 0.07): The game offers a robust end-game mapping system, similar to popular ARPGs, providing virtually infinite content. The inclusion of local co-op further enhances the gameplay experience.
- Challenging and unique enemies (weight 0.07): The game is recognized for its challenging difficulty and unique enemy and boss designs. Players enjoy the process of taking down these distinct bosses.

Common complaints:
- Repetitive and Unpolished Gameplay (weight 0.65): Players report a general lack of polish, repetitive content, and uninteresting progression, leading to a monotonous and frustrating experience. The game feels unfinished and lacks engaging mechanics.
- Flawed Skill Tree System (weight 0.21): The innovative skill node system is poorly executed, with issues like a lack of effective main skills, frustrating random generation, and insufficient damage nodes. There are also bugs with skill gems and an invisible cursor when allocating points, making it difficult to use.
- Frequent Game Crashes (weight 0.21): Multiple players experienced frequent game crashes, often leading to lost progress. This significantly impacts playability and overall enjoyment, making the game unstable.
- Unbalanced Difficulty Scaling (weight 0.13): The game suffers from significant balance issues, particularly in damage scaling. Weak enemies deal disproportionate damage, leading to one-shot scenarios in mid-to-late game and an overall frustrating difficulty curve.
- Overly Random Progression/Crafting (weight 0.12): The crafting system is too random and restrictive. Additionally, the game's progression is heavily reliant on biased RNG for unlocks, potentially forcing players to restart for viable builds.
- Poor Performance and Optimization (weight 0.1): The game suffers from poor optimization, leading to lag and jerky performance even on high-end systems. Controller support is also poorly implemented, making navigation and gameplay frustrating.
- Subpar Localization Quality (weight 0.09): Localization in multiple languages (Japanese, Chinese) is of poor quality, often appearing as machine translation and being incomplete. This negatively impacts the experience for non-English speakers.
- Limited Co-op Functionality (weight 0.09): Co-op functionality is severely limited, lacking both network co-op and proper local co-op support. Issues include shared keyboard limitations and input device conflicts.
- Clunky User Interface (weight 0.08): The user interface is considered ugly and has functional issues, such as inconsistent tooltips and a missing 'Confirm' button in the options menu, leading to a clunky experience.
- Unclear Stamina System (weight 0.08): The stamina system is unclear and poorly implemented, especially for weapons like crossbows. There's a lack of information on stamina requirements, and skill upgrades can disproportionately increase mana consumption.
- Invisible Cursor on Steam Deck (weight 0.04): On Steam Deck, a critical bug renders the cursor invisible, making the game unplayable on the platform.
- Tiring Map Traps (weight 0.04): Certain map designs feature unfair floor-pattern traps that cause eye strain and require constant, tiring dodging, negatively impacting player comfort.
- Harsh Softcore Death Penalty (weight 0.04): The softcore mode's character deletion after three deaths is overly punishing, making it difficult to progress once a player gets stuck on a stage.

Gameplay feedback:
- Dynamic, Expanding Skill Tree (weight 0.57): The game features an extensive and unique skill tree system that is randomly generated and expands infinitely with each run. Players can customize, modify, and rebuild the skill tree using in-game currencies and resources, allowing for diverse character development and replayability.
- Roguelike ARPG Core (weight 0.48): The game is a roguelike/roguelite with strong Action RPG elements, blending dungeon crawling, hack-and-slash combat, and permanent progression. It offers challenging gameplay, requiring players to adapt and strategize within its procedural generation.
- Versatile Combat & Builds (weight 0.22): Combat is dynamic, allowing players to switch between melee and ranged weapons, and utilize a dash ability. The game supports a wide variety of build possibilities, including ranged, melee, and summoner specializations, offering deep complexity and player choice.
- Varied Life System (weight 0.2): The game offers different difficulty modes, including Softcore (3 lives) and Hardcore (permadeath), catering to various player preferences. While some progression is permanent, death typically resets the current run.
- Persistent Resource Economy (weight 0.18): Light fragments and skill gems are crucial resources that persist across runs. These currencies are used to unlock new abilities, weapons, and permanent upgrades in the legacy skill tree, facilitating meta-progression and character improvement.
- Multiplayer & Control Options (weight 0.13): The game supports both keyboard/mouse and controller inputs, though some users reported issues with switching. It also features local co-op, online multiplayer with leaderboards, and seasonal content, enhancing social and competitive play.
- High Difficulty Curve (weight 0.09): The game presents a significant challenge, being easy to learn but difficult to master. Players will frequently find themselves in dangerous situations, requiring strategic play and potentially repeated grinding.
- Central Village Hub (weight 0.07): A central village hub serves as a safe zone for players to respawn, save progress, and access various upgrades and crafting options. This hub provides a persistent base between dungeon runs.
- Dynamic Map Modifiers (weight 0.07): Maps feature various modifiers, minibosses, and mini-events that add variety and allow players to increase difficulty for greater rewards. This system encourages strategic map engagement.
- Unique Style & Innovation (weight 0.07): The game is praised for its unique style, atmosphere, and innovative ideas. It offers a diverse and challenging experience that stands out from other titles in the genre.
- Repetitive Floor Content (weight 0.06): While the game introduces new bosses after certain floors, some players noted a degree of repetitiveness in events and monster types across later floors, suggesting a need for more variety.
- Engaging Gameplay Loop (weight 0.06): The core gameplay loop is enjoyable, particularly in Hardcore mode, providing a satisfying sense of steadily increasing power and progression.
- Diverse Boss Encounters (weight 0.06): The game features a variety of bosses and enemies, with specific 'key' bosses needing to be defeated to progress through levels. Boss mechanics and screen-wide explosions add to the combat challenge.
- Multiple Unlockable Characters (weight 0.06): The game offers a selection of 8 playable characters, with two available from the start and the remaining six unlockable through gameplay progression, providing character diversity.
- Kill Streak Mechanic (weight 0.05): A kill streak system is present, but it requires active monster kills to maintain, rather than just hitting enemies. This encourages aggressive play.
- Minor Bugs & Learning Curve (weight 0.05): The game has some reported glitches and bugs, and the gameplay may require an adjustment period for new players. However, the overall gameplay experience is generally considered good.
- Undestroyable Traps (weight 0.05): Traps are a recurring element in the game, and some players found them annoying, noting that there is no apparent way to destroy them.

Performance notes:
- Excellent overall performance (weight 0.06): Many players reported excellent overall performance, with the game running smoothly even during streaming. This indicates good optimization for various setups.
- No significant bugs encountered (weight 0.03): A significant number of players reported a bug-free experience, indicating a high level of polish and stability in the game's current build.
- Occasional game stuttering (weight 0.03): Some users experienced stuttering issues, suggesting that while performance is generally good, there might be specific configurations or scenarios where optimization is lacking.

Recommendations:
- Highly Recommended Game (weight 0.46): Many players highly recommend the game, often citing its value for money, especially during sales or in its Early Access state. They express excitement for future updates and continued playtime, suggesting a strong core experience.
- Genre Appeal & Comparisons (weight 0.12): The game is frequently recommended to fans of specific genres and titles, particularly ARPGs like Diablo and Path of Exile, and roguelikes. This helps potential players understand if the game aligns with their preferences.
- Game Needs Polish (weight 0.08): Some players do not recommend the game in its current state, citing it as 'too raw' or unpolished. A few even suggest a refund, indicating significant issues that need addressing before a full recommendation.
- Difficulty Options Needed (weight 0.06): Players suggest adding an option to lower difficulty in later stages. This would allow more diverse builds to be viable and enjoyable, catering to players who want to experience their character's power without constant extreme challenge.
- Challenging Gameplay (weight 0.04): The game is noted for its challenging gameplay, appealing to players who seek a difficult experience. It's recommended for those who enjoy pushing their limits and engaging with demanding mechanics.
- Consistent Updates Crucial (weight 0.02): A specific concern is raised about the consistency of updates post-release. Players advise postponing purchase if there's no clear commitment to ongoing development and content delivery.
- Melee Builds Not Recommended (weight 0.02): One specific piece of feedback advises against using melee builds. This suggests a potential imbalance or lack of viability for this particular playstyle, which could frustrate players.
- Demo Recommended (weight 0.02): Players are advised to try the demo before making a purchase decision. This is a practical suggestion for potential buyers to assess the game's fit for their preferences.

Other player notes:
- Unique Hand-Drawn Art Style (weight 0.3): Players consistently praise the game's unique, hand-drawn art style, noting its distinctiveness and charm despite a minimalist or rough aesthetic. This visual approach is a significant differentiator for the game.
- Ongoing Early Access Development (weight 0.1): The game is currently in Early Access/beta development, with a demo available. Players note that significant updates have been released since the demo, indicating ongoing development.
- Captivating Dark Atmosphere (weight 0.09): The game effectively uses light and shadow to create a dark, unique atmosphere. This visual element is not just aesthetic but also serves as an important gameplay objective.
- Subtle Background Audio (weight 0.06): The game's audio, including music and sound effects, is generally considered fitting and non-intrusive, though some players note its minimal presence.
- Passionate Indie Developers (weight 0.04): Players recognize the game as an indie title developed by passionate individuals. This highlights the dedication behind the project.
- Distinct from Vampire Survivors (weight 0.04): The game offers a distinct experience compared to Vampire Survivors, suggesting it provides a fresh take on its genre rather than being a clone.
- Legible Font (weight 0.02): The font used in the game is easy to read, contributing to a positive user experience.
- Numerous Steam Achievements (weight 0.02): The game offers a large number of Steam Achievements, though there might be issues with offline synchronization.
- Good Dubbing Quality (weight 0.02): The game's dubbing quality is noted as good, enhancing the overall audio experience.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.3): Players are satisfied when the game delivers on its promises, especially within the ARPG and rogue-like genres, offering deep, addictive, and enjoyable gameplay. Key factors include innovative skill systems, build variety, unique art design, smooth performance, and consistent developer improvements and bug fixes, which collectively enhance the overall experience and replayability.
- Frustration (weight 0.12): Frustration stems primarily from technical issues such as poor performance, lag, crashes, and unoptimized controls, particularly for controllers. Game design flaws like balance issues, one-shot mechanics, permadeath, and poor localization also contribute significantly to player annoyance, hindering progression and overall enjoyment.
- Excitement (weight 0.11): Excitement is driven by the game's potential, particularly its unique and infinite skill tree system, which promises varied playthroughs and strategic depth. Players are also excited by challenging and dynamic combat, the prospect of creating diverse builds, and the overall quality and genre appeal of the game, looking forward to future content and improvements.
- Disappointment (weight 0.1): Disappointment arises from unfulfilled potential, often due to repetitive content, lack of synergy between mechanics, and poor technical execution including performance issues and bugs. Clunky controls, dull combat, uninteresting progression, and issues with UI or difficulty scaling also contribute to players feeling let down by the game.
- Enjoyment (weight 0.08): Enjoyment is derived from the game's core gameplay loop, addictive mechanics, and build variety, often complemented by appealing graphics and art style. Developer improvements and a generally casual, fun experience also contribute to players finding the game enjoyable.
- Appreciation (weight 0.05): Players appreciate the developers' commitment, responsiveness, and dedication to improving the game, often highlighting consistent support and content updates. The unique art style and well-designed character-building mechanics, especially the skill tree system, are also significant causes of appreciation.
- Joy (weight 0.04): Joy is experienced when players find the game genuinely fun and enjoyable, particularly through its gameplay and progression systems. The overall quality of the rogue-like experience and the satisfaction of upgrading and becoming stronger contribute to this positive emotion.
- Surprise (weight 0.02): Surprise occurs when the game unexpectedly exceeds player expectations in terms of enjoyment or quality. Positive surprises also include unexpected conveniences, such as not losing progress after crashes, or easily overcoming challenges like bosses.
- Fun (weight 0.02): Fun is a direct result of the engaging gameplay experience, particularly when it involves complex builds and satisfying randomization. The overall enjoyment derived from the game's features contributes to this feeling.
- Mild frustration (weight 0.02): Mild frustration is caused by minor but persistent issues such as monotony, constant dodging, stability problems, random crafting mechanics, and clunky menu navigation. These issues, while not game-breaking, detract slightly from the overall experience.
- Admiration (weight 0.02): Admiration is directed towards the developers for their unique creativity, genius, and dedication in crafting the game. Players admire the distinct vision and hard work evident in the game's design and execution.
- Confusion (weight 0.02): Confusion arises from poor localization, unclear UI elements, and issues with the inventory system. Mislabeling of the game's genre and specific mechanics like the stamina system also contribute to player bewilderment.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Hope is generated by the game's potential for future development and the developers' apparent eagerness to listen to player feedback. This suggests a belief that the game will improve and evolve over time.
- Boredom (weight 0.01): Boredom sets in due to repetitive content, including maps and bosses, and a general lack of depth in gameplay. The feeling of doing the same things repeatedly without significant variation leads to disengagement.
- Desire (weight 0.01): Desire is expressed for specific missing features or preferred implementations, such as the lack of local co-op, the need for better tooltips, and preferences for different control schemes or online play options.
- Mild criticism (weight 0.01): Mild criticism points out minor flaws like rough graphics and animations, specific bugs such as keyboard remapping issues, and a general sense of repetition or lack of unique events within the game.
- Optimism (weight 0.01): Optimism is based on the potential for future fixes and the ongoing development of the game. Players feel hopeful that current issues will be addressed and new content will be added.
- Neutrality (weight 0.01): Neutrality occurs when players find nothing particularly outstanding or negative about the game, or when a unique art style is noted but doesn't strongly sway their overall sentiment.
- Mild disappointment (weight 0.01): Mild disappointment stems from limited map variety, a small number of effective skills, and a decrease in enjoyment over time. These issues, while not severe, slightly diminish the overall positive experience.
- Anger (weight 0.01): Anger is caused by severe technical issues such as frequent crashes and the resulting loss of progress. An ugly or poorly designed interface can also contribute to this strong negative emotion.}