RICE - Repetitive Indie Combat Experience™
Last updated: 2025-06-12
- Fun, charming, good value early access game
- Responsive developer provides active post-launch updates
- Complex upgrade system with synergistic elements
- Severe performance and lag issues plague gameplay
- Grindy meta-progression, unclear mechanics, poor explanations
- Lacks content, replayability; poor enemy scaling
Verdict
Mixed
Summary
Positive 57% · Negative 43%. Score: 43 / 100
Positives:
- The game is considered fun, enjoyable, and charming, with simple yet comprehensive gameplay and well-executed graphics. It's also praised for being a good value for its price, making it an appealing and entertaining experience overall.
- Despite being in early access, the game has a lot of content, build variety, and potential for a solid indie combat experience. It combines elements from various games and includes meta elements, showing promise and being worth the price for an early access title.
- The developers are responsive to user feedback, promptly addressing issues and implementing quality-of-life improvements. This includes fixing performance issues, adding HUD scaling options, and adjusting settings based on community input, demonstrating active development and support.
- The game's humor, sarcasm, and references to game tropes are appreciated by reviewers, making the game stand out. Clear information about badges and stats, combined with meta jokes, contribute to the game's engaging and humorous experience.
- Players find enjoyment in experimenting with builds and discovering ways to 'break' the game, particularly through the meta-progression board. This aspect encourages creative play and a sense of mastery as players understand and exploit the game's systems.
Negatives:
- The game suffers from significant performance and optimization issues, including lag, FPS drops, freezing, and unplayability, even on high-end PCs. These issues are exacerbated in later stages with more enemies and effects, and can occur even in menus. Some reviewers reported the game being unplayable due to lag.
- The meta-progression system is grindy, slow, and sometimes confusing, with unclear upgrade descriptions. The 'double or nothing' mechanic can lead to lost progress and currency, making runs feel unrewarding. Some players found ways to exploit the system, undermining the intended gameplay loop.
- The game lacks sufficient content and replayability, with limited weapon variety and maps. The gameplay loop becomes monotonous quickly, and the content feels lacking even after a short amount of playtime. Some weapons are also considered low quality, further reducing variety.
- Enemy health scales exponentially, leading to bullet-sponge enemies and making the game feel grindy. This scaling, combined with limited damage upgrades, causes significant lag and slowdowns, especially with complex explosions. Some players also reported becoming overpowered, which also leads to performance issues.
- The game suffers from a lack of clear explanations for its mechanics, making it difficult for players to understand how to play effectively. This obscurity, intended as an aesthetic choice, hinders the player's ability to understand game mechanics. Power-ups and meta-progressions have unclear names and descriptions.
Gameplay:
- The game features a complex upgrade system with interlocking mechanics. Weapons are acquired and upgraded through a matching system, while permanent progression involves equipping medals and tiles into a grid, creating synergies and customizing loadouts. Stronger tiles have complex shapes, encouraging strategic placement.
- The core gameplay loop revolves around destroying planets or areas of 'void' to collect loot, defeating enemies for experience, and repeating the process. This 'kill, loot, and repeat' cycle focuses on providing a pure action experience, with a strong emphasis on acquiring weapons and enhancing the player's abilities.
- The game is a horde survival, bullet heaven type game. During a run, the game is a fairly standard horde survival game.
- Players can equip a limited number of weapons, typically starting with 3 weapon slots and 1 reserve slot. The game allows for the possibility of expanding these weapon slots during a run, providing more options for combat.
- Despite visual similarities, the game has a slower pace compared to games like Vampire Survivors or Soulstone Survivors.
Performance:
- Several reviews specifically mention that excessive on-screen elements like coins, explosions, and enemy spawns contribute to severe lag and frame rate drops, sometimes to the point of making the game unplayable. This indicates a need for better optimization regarding particle effects and entity management.
- Some players report stable performance and smooth gameplay, even on devices like the Steam Deck. This suggests that the game's performance may vary depending on hardware configuration or specific game settings.
- Enabling 4K resolution significantly reduces the field of view. This is a specific issue that impacts the player's visual experience and may need to be addressed with resolution scaling options or UI adjustments.
- A specific technical issue is mentioned where the game fails to start, and the suggested solution involves adjusting the OS sound settings to 48kHz. This is a niche issue, but the provided solution is helpful for affected players.
- One review uses harsh language ('total crap') to describe the game engine without providing specific details. This point is not constructive due to its lack of specific feedback and emotional tone.
Recommendations:
- Many reviewers find the game promising, fun, and worth its price, especially for fans of the bullet heaven or survivor-like genres. They recommend it to players who enjoy similar games like Vampire Survivors, praising its unique take on the genre and expressing excitement for future development.
- Many reviewers currently advise against purchasing the game due to significant technical issues, bugs, imbalance, unoptimized performance, and a lack of content. Some find it unplayable or not worth their time in its current state. However, some reviewers are optimistic about future updates and improvements.
- Some reviewers feel the game needs more optimization to succeed in the Survivors-like genre. They specifically mention the need for faster-paced and smoother gameplay.
- The game features a meta-currency betting system on stage replays, allowing players to potentially double their earnings. One reviewer suggests tweaking the 'double or nothing' system to provide partial rewards upon death.
- One reviewer advises caution in endless mode, suggesting players quit after earning a certain amount to protect their computer's health. This may indicate performance or stability issues in longer play sessions.
Miscellaneous:
- The game's core loop and mechanics become repetitive quickly. Hidden mechanics are unlocked within the first 30 minutes, and early ascensions don't introduce new elements, leading to a lack of long-term engagement.
- The developers are actively updating the game and adding new content based on player feedback. This includes addressing initial balance issues and planning to add features like fullscreen mode.
- The core mechanics of the game are considered innovative and enjoyable by the reviewer. This suggests a strong foundation for the gameplay experience.
- The game contains damage zones on the floor that can cause the player to take damage. This is a specific detail about the game's level design and potential challenges.
- One reviewer provided detailed instructions for Windows 10 users with NVIDIA GPUs on how to ensure the game uses the dedicated GPU instead of integrated graphics. This suggests a potential optimization issue or a need for specific configuration.
