Info about Quasimorph: End of Dream:

Official game description:
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About the Game
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Every mercenary is looking for that one job that will allow them to retire. And it seems that you've just stumbled upon it: the AnCom corporation is asking you to retrieve the intellectual assets of the Fresco corporation.  
Gather your gear, prepare your clones, and get ready for the start of a story that will forever change the Solar System.
Level the Playing Field. At Any Cost.
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Become the boss of your own Private Military Company: carry out orders from corporations, and earn a reputation with your blood and sweat. Explore planetary bases, secret labs, and the wreckage of spaceships to find new technologies, abilities, and other items that will help you level the playing field during operations.  
Make mistakes. Overcome and become better.
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Remember that you have an advantage: clone the best employees and send them to certain death to probe the weaknesses of your opponents. There is no need to risk valuable human assets and expose your PMC to unnecessary legal risks, for nobody cares about the fate of a clones.  
Don't Bury Yourself Under the Crossfire.
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Corporations hire ruthless mercenaries to carry out their shadow operations. Demons distort human nature and pervert human evolution.  
Gather a team of professionals, count your ammo, and keep track of your equipment to be prepared for any perversions of this space slaughter.

Release date: 31 May, 2023

Categories: Turn-based Strategy, Roguelike, Extraction Shooter, Inventory Management, Character Progression, Survival, Tactical Combat, 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:
- Engaging and Addictive Gameplay (weight 0.99): Players find the game highly engaging, addictive, and fun, often praising its challenging yet rewarding gameplay loop. Many hours of enjoyment are reported, with the game being considered a promising and worthwhile experience.
- Strong Core Mechanics (weight 0.99): The game's core mechanics, including its turn-based combat, roguelike elements, and unique features like quasimorphosis and extraction, are highly praised for being well-designed, fluid, and intuitive. Understanding these mechanics enhances the overall enjoyment.
- Excellent Art and Graphics (weight 0.17): The game's visual presentation, including its art style, graphics, and enemy designs, receives significant acclaim. The pixel art is particularly highlighted as charming, well-made, and stunning, contributing to an immersive world.
- Powerful Shadow Blade Class (weight 0.13): The 'Shadow Blade' class is singled out as exceptionally strong, particularly for melee builds. Its high HP, increased melee damage, and ability to dominate chaotic battles make it a highly recommended and enjoyable playstyle.
- Successful Extraction Roguelike (weight 0.12): The game successfully delivers on its 'extraction roguelike' concept, drawing favorable comparisons to Escape from Tarkov while incorporating its own unique pixel art style and roguelike elements.
- Excellent Sound and Music (weight 0.11): The game's sound design, including its music and environmental sounds, is highly praised. The soundtrack is described as captivating, memorable, and adapting well to situations, enhancing immersion and drawing comparisons to Doom.
- Impressive and Effective Demo (weight 0.11): The game's demo is highly effective, impressing players with its completeness and fun factor. It successfully convinces many to purchase the full game, indicating strong initial appeal.
- Strong Sci-Fi Atmosphere (weight 0.09): The game effectively captures a futuristic dystopian sci-fi atmosphere, drawing inspiration from titles like Doom, Quake, and Warhammer 40k while maintaining its unique identity. It's seen as a fresh take on the 'Tarkov-like' genre.
- Satisfying Gunplay (weight 0.08): The game's firearms are well-received, with players noting that guns feel distinct based on type and ammo. Specific weapons like the railgun and shotgun are highlighted for their satisfying feel and sound design.
- Railgun is Overpowered (weight 0.07): The railgun is noted as a crucial and powerful weapon, capable of one-shotting enemies and effectively defeating bosses, especially when exploiting elemental weaknesses.
- Well-Paced Levels (weight 0.06): The game's level design and pacing are well-suited for shorter play sessions, allowing players to complete levels efficiently. Early game enemies are manageable with decent equipment.
- Beneficial Cannibalism Mechanic (weight 0.05): The cannibalism mechanic is highlighted as a high-return, low-risk skill that boosts attack and critical rates with minimal HP loss, allowing players to 'eat people' for strategic advantage.
- Unique and Innovative (weight 0.04): The game is seen as unique and innovative, venturing into areas that similar games have not explored, which contributes to its distinct identity.
- Melee Build Resource Advantage (weight 0.04): Melee builds offer advantages in resource management, as they don't struggle with food and have more backpack space compared to gun builds, leading to fewer ammo/consumable concerns.
- Complex and Difficult (weight 0.04): The game is perceived as complex due to its extensive itemization and challenging difficulty, drawing comparisons to other notoriously difficult games.
- Brutal Combat (weight 0.04): Combat is generally described as impactful and brutal, providing a satisfying experience for players.
- Mixed Story Reception (weight 0.03): While some players desire a more profound story, others find the existing narrative to be emotional and deep, suggesting mixed reception on this front.
- Hades Team Benefits (weight 0.03): The Hades Reconnaissance Team offers significant advantages, including ease of leveling and powerful gun accuracy correction, benefiting various character builds.
- Enjoyable Venus Experience (weight 0.02): The early experience on Venus is positive, with players finding the difficulty level to be moderate and enjoyable.
- Steam Deck Compatibility (weight 0.02): The game offers excellent compatibility with the Steam Deck, providing a seamless plug-and-play experience with native resolution adaptation.

Common complaints:
- Steep Early Game Difficulty (weight 0.76): Many players found the early game extremely difficult and punishing, citing a steep learning curve, lack of a comprehensive tutorial, and poor in-game guidance. This often led to frustration and a high rate of early deaths, making it hard for new players to get into the game.
- Cannot Revisit Cleared Maps (weight 0.19): The inability to revisit previously cleared maps was a major point of frustration. This limitation prevented players from grinding for experience or equipment, making progression difficult and leading to a feeling of wasted effort after failed runs.
- Poor & Unchangeable Controls (weight 0.19): Players reported issues with the game's controls, finding them clunky and unintuitive. A significant complaint was the inability to rebind keys or view control options, which hindered accessibility and player comfort.
- Punishing Permadeath & No Progression (weight 0.17): The game's permadeath system, combined with a lack of persistent character progression or unlockables, led to a high non-completion rate. Players felt that hard-earned progress was lost upon death, making the game feel like a repetitive grind.
- Lacks Tactical Information & Tools (weight 0.16): The game lacks crucial tactical information and environmental features. Players desired summaries of enemy types, more varied enemy behaviors, and defensive options like mines or fortifications, as well as better cover interactions.
- Frequent Instant Deaths (weight 0.14): Players frequently experienced instant or near-instant deaths from enemies, often due to high damage output, status effects like bleeding, or boss mechanics. This made progress feel fragile and easily negated.
- Ineffective Melee Combat (weight 0.12): Melee combat was widely considered ineffective and often useless, especially against armed enemies. Players felt that melee weapons lacked significant differences and that the associated skill tree needed substantial improvement.
- Unvaried & Poor AI (weight 0.08): The enemy AI was noted for its lack of tactical variety, static behavior, and poor pathfinding. Issues like AI blocking doorways were specifically mentioned, impacting gameplay flow.
- Fragile Energy Weapons (weight 0.08): Energy weapons were criticized for breaking too easily and requiring frequent reloads, making them less practical than other weapon types. This imbalance made them an undesirable choice for many players.
- Forced Blueprint Grinding (weight 0.06): Players found that grinding for blueprints on earlier missions, particularly Venus, was essential for progression. Without this, they would get stuck on later levels like Mercury, indicating a forced grind mechanic.
- Cumbersome Equipment Management (weight 0.06): The game lacks quality-of-life features for equipment management, such as an equipment loadout system. Players found manually dragging and organizing items cumbersome, and unlocking new equipment was too difficult.
- Ineffective Armor System (weight 0.06): Armor was perceived as ineffective, with heavy armor offering little noticeable difference from lighter options. Players felt they were still being one-shot even with the best available armor, indicating a balance issue.
- Equipment Progression Issues (weight 0.06): The game's progression system makes it difficult to beat later chapters without specific equipment or supplies. Players also noted an inability to unlock new starting equipment in the late game, hindering preparation.
- Gatling Gun Balance Issues (weight 0.06): The Gatling gun was highlighted as an overpowered weapon that quickly eclipsed lower-level weapons, leading to balance issues. However, it was also noted to be ineffective early on due to accuracy and ammo consumption.
- Spaceship Upgrade Limitations (weight 0.06): Players suggested that the spaceship should be upgradeable, allowing for stronger abilities, new weapon unlocks, and increased storage capacity, which is currently too small.
- Weak Starting Weapons (weight 0.06): Starting and low-level pistols were deemed insufficient due to slow reload times, low damage, and overall ineffectiveness. Players felt these weapons needed to be replaced quickly.
- Excessive Shotgun Ammo Types (weight 0.06): Shotguns were criticized for having too many ineffective ammo types, which unnecessarily consumed valuable inventory slots. This made managing shotgun ammunition inefficient.
- Localization & Subtitle Issues (weight 0.06): Players reported issues with localization, specifically the absence of subtitles and the presence of untranslated Korean text in important parts of the game, even with other language support enabled.
- Underdeveloped Quasimorph Mechanics (weight 0.06): The 'Quasimorph' element of the game was mentioned, with specific feedback on its mechanics, such as blood infection leading to deaths, and a general sentiment that the experience felt 'half-baked'.

Gameplay feedback:
- Challenging Turn-Based Roguelike (weight 0.33): The game is a challenging turn-based roguelike that demands patience and strategic thinking. Its high difficulty, especially in the early stages, requires players to carefully consider each action and adapt to a brutal learning curve.
- Dynamic Difficulty & Mutation (weight 0.18): A dynamic difficulty system, represented by a 'red number' or 'mutation value,' increases over turns, making enemies stronger, more aggressive, and prone to mutation. This mechanic, tied to the 'Quasimorph' transformation, significantly escalates the challenge as the game progresses.
- Strategic Movement Modes (weight 0.18): Mastering various movement modes (stealth, normal, dash) and understanding their action point costs is vital for survival. Players must strategically switch modes and manage action points, especially when interacting with doors, to avoid immediate enemy attacks.
- Crucial Inventory Management (weight 0.12): Effective inventory and resource management are crucial for survival. The game features a Tetris-like inventory system, requiring players to meticulously decide what to carry, craft, and equip, as space is limited.
- Loot-Driven Progression (weight 0.12): The core gameplay loop involves killing enemies, collecting loot, and enhancing your soldier. The robust loot system, including abundant weapons and skill growth, encourages replayability and experimentation with different loadouts.
- Permadeath & Progression Loss (weight 0.11): Death is a significant setback, resulting in the complete loss of all collected supplies, equipment, and character progression. This roguelike element means players must restart from scratch after dying, emphasizing the importance of survival.
- Tactical Door Mechanics (weight 0.11): Door mechanics are critical for tactical play, allowing players to open, close, weld, and even shoot through partially open doors. Enemies react quickly to door openings, necessitating careful planning and precise execution of actions like throwing bombs or shooting.
- Strategic Extraction Options (weight 0.09): Extraction is possible upon finding valuable base upgrade chips or quest items, allowing players to secure found supplies and update their equipment. This provides a strategic retreat option without necessarily completing the entire mission.
- Armor & Cover Inconsistencies (weight 0.09): Despite wearing the best armor, players can still be one-shot by powerful enemies, especially those with high-firepower weapons. Obstacles and cover do not always function reliably, allowing enemies to sometimes shoot through them.
- Weapon Viability & Balance (weight 0.09): While firearms are generally more potent, melee combat can be highly viable and even overpowered with a leveled melee class. The game encourages using a variety of weapons to adapt to different combat scenarios.
- Play as Disposable Clone (weight 0.09): Players embody disposable cloned soldiers sent on dangerous missions across alien planets. This narrative element reinforces the game's high difficulty and the expectation of frequent character loss.
- Weapon Durability & Repair (weight 0.09): Weapons and equipment degrade and require repair kits, which can be crafted or found. However, players can mitigate wear by strategically swapping weapons to reduce their load, potentially avoiding the need for repair kits.
- Complex Healing & Survival (weight 0.08): The game features a complex healing system that requires specific items for different wound types (fractures, penetrating, infections) and includes managing addiction. Additionally, players must contend with hunger and limb-specific healing.
- Significant Character Progression (weight 0.08): Character progression is significant, with fully upgraded characters being vastly superior to new ones. Players are advised to farm early missions for blueprints and strong starting equipment to build powerful characters.
- Diverse Mission Environments (weight 0.07): Missions involve exploring various locations across the solar system, such as laboratories and shipwrecks, to gather materials and deal with local inhabitants. Initial gear often requires farming blueprints on early planets.
- Tricky Grenade Usage (weight 0.07): Grenades are powerful but challenging to use effectively, often leading to self-damage if not deployed carefully. They are best utilized in enclosed monster rooms for maximum area-of-effect damage.
- Cover System Mechanics (weight 0.07): The game incorporates a cover system where single-tile cover can allow players to evade incoming fire while still shooting enemies. However, line of sight issues can occur, with enemies sometimes shooting through walls.
- Non-Standard Controls (weight 0.07): Movement is primarily controlled by arrow keys, with WASD assigned to other functions. Players must learn specific keybindings, including Space for skipping turns and right-click for character orientation, as mouse clicks can be obstructed.
- Unique Cannibalism Mechanic (weight 0.07): The game includes a unique cannibalism mechanic, allowing players to cut meat from corpses (or even themselves) using a blade. This provides a resource acquisition method with a dark twist.

Performance notes:
- Excellent Steam Deck battery life (weight 0.03): Players are reporting excellent battery performance on the Steam Deck, achieving over 6 hours of gameplay when limiting the Thermal Design Power (TDP) to 3W and frame rate to 30fps. This indicates good optimization for portable play.

Recommendations:
- Eagerly Awaiting Full Release (weight 0.33): Many players are eagerly anticipating the full release of the game, with a strong intention to purchase it upon launch. Some are considering it as a wishlist item, contingent on price and further development.
- Highly Recommended Game (weight 0.27): The game is highly recommended by players who found it enjoyable and promising. They suggest trying it out, especially since it's free, and believe it's worth the time investment.
- Niche Genre Appeal (weight 0.12): The game is specifically recommended for fans of tactical rogue-likes and the 'Mystery Dungeon' genre. Players note that its unique balance and permadeath mechanics appeal to this niche.
- Specific Balance & Feature Requests (weight 0.11): Players have specific expectations for improvements in the full version, including more realistic character models, better hunger mechanics, larger starting inventory, and adjustments to weapon durability and item availability. They expect balance points to be refined.
- Current Value Assessment (weight 0.05): Players feel the current version of the game is worth a specific price range, but express that they cannot fully enjoy it in its present state, implying a need for improvements.
- Improve Save System (weight 0.03): Players request that the game implement a robust save system that preserves progress, including location, map, and equipment, upon exiting or crashing.
- Suggests Infinite Level (weight 0.03): A player suggested adding an infinite, free-play level similar to 'Tarkov' to enhance replayability and content.
- Embrace Permadeath (weight 0.03): Players advise detaching emotionally from characters due to the game's permadeath mechanic. This highlights a core gameplay loop that requires a specific mindset.
- Trust in Developer (weight 0.02): A player expressed interest in acquiring future games from the same development studio, indicating satisfaction with their work.
- Casual Play Intention (weight 0.02): One player stated they would play the game for a few hours, indicating a casual or exploratory approach rather than deep engagement.
- Game Deleted (weight 0.02): One player indicated they deleted the game, suggesting a negative experience or lack of engagement. This is a direct, albeit brief, negative sentiment.

Other player notes:
- Similar to other games (weight 0.12): The game's mechanics and overall feel draw comparisons to various other titles, including Stoneshard, X-Com, Dungeons of Dredmor, Furaiki no Shiren, Sword of the Stars: The Pit, Purple Crystal, and Pixel Dungeon in an Alien-esque setting.
- Game needs further improvement (weight 0.1): Players express a strong desire for continued improvement and development, acknowledging the game's early access status and potential for growth. They hope for a polished and refined final product.
- Dark, oppressive atmosphere (weight 0.1): The game successfully creates a dark, gloomy, and oppressive atmosphere, which contributes to an anxiety-inducing and hostile environment. This aesthetic is a notable aspect of the player experience.
- Excellent soundtrack and pixel art (weight 0.08): Players highly praise the game's soundtrack, describing it as heavy, abrasive, and featuring bluesy-hard rock elements reminiscent of classic Doom and Quake OSTs. The pixel art style, while not universally lauded, effectively contributes to the dark aesthetic.
- Material utility and hoarding (weight 0.06): Players are concerned about the lack of utility for materials brought back to base, as they cannot be exchanged or crafted. There's a desire for lower-intensity missions for farming and a tendency to hoard mutation-reducing items.
- Promising prologue to Quasimorph (weight 0.05): The game is a prologue to the upcoming RPG Quasimorph, and despite being a prologue, its base offerings are considered promising and unique.
- Classic shareware feel (weight 0.05): Players note that the game has a classic shareware feel, and some were surprised that it was offered for free, suggesting a perceived value beyond its price point.
- Desire for more weapons (weight 0.03): Players are looking forward to the addition of more weapons in future updates, indicating a desire for increased combat variety.
- Believable capitalist future (weight 0.03): The game's narrative effectively portrays a believable capitalist future, where the constant malaise of this system overshadows even the monstrous mutant experiments.
- Consider Tarkov-like store (weight 0.02): A suggestion was made to consider implementing a Tarkov-like store system in a new version of the game, indicating interest in different economic models.
- Korean inventory bug fixed (weight 0.02): A specific bug related to Korean text appearing in the inventory has been fixed with patch 0.2.3, indicating active bug resolution by developers.
- Melee strategy: run everywhere (weight 0.02): A specific gameplay tip for melee players is to constantly run everywhere, suggesting a particular strategy for that playstyle.

Emotions:
- Satisfaction (weight 0.27): Players feel satisfied when they successfully learn and master the game's mechanics, especially in challenging situations like defeating bosses or understanding complex systems. The strategic depth, enjoyable gameplay loop, and unique features like the detailed HP system or the Quasimorph mechanic contribute significantly to this positive experience, making the game feel rewarding and replayable.
- Frustration (weight 0.24): Frustration stems primarily from the game's high and often unfair difficulty spikes, particularly in the early and late game, leading to frequent and sudden deaths. Issues such as a lack of clear guidance, opaque mechanics, progression problems, and various bugs (e.g., unresponsive inventory, mission objective issues) exacerbate this feeling, making the game feel punishing and unrewarding.
- Excitement (weight 0.14): Excitement is generated by the game's challenging and tactical rogue-like gameplay, unique mechanics (like weapon breaking and limb loss), and overall potential. Players are thrilled by the brutal encounters, psychological elements, and the prospect of future content and the full release, indicating a strong positive anticipation for the game's development.
- Disappointment (weight 0.1): Disappointment arises when the game fails to meet expectations, often due to significant balance issues, a lack of progression, and numerous bugs. Players are let down by features that feel useless, an inability to progress due to difficulty, and the perception that the game's current state detracts from its otherwise enjoyable concept.
- Anticipation (weight 0.03): Anticipation is driven by the strong desire for the full release of the game and future improvements. Players are looking forward to the complete experience and further development, indicating a belief in the game's long-term potential.
- Joy (weight 0.03): Joy is experienced through the overall fun and unique gameplay mechanics, such as the ability to eat people or the use of specific weapons like the chainsword. The game provides an enjoyable and engaging experience that brings a sense of delight to players.
- Appreciation (weight 0.03): Players show appreciation for the game's unique systems, such as the health and time mechanics, as well as its atmosphere, sound design, and dark humor. The effectiveness of the demo and the perceived quality of the developers' work also contribute to this positive sentiment.
- Anger (weight 0.02): Anger is primarily caused by perceived unfairness in game design, particularly sudden and unavoidable deaths, and frustrating progression mechanics like skill levels resetting. The inability to overcome specific difficult challenges, such as the Broodmother Spider, also contributes to this strong negative emotion.
- Helpfulness (weight 0.02): Players feel helpful when they can assist others by providing tips, strategies, and explanations for game mechanics. This indicates a desire to contribute positively to the community and improve the experience for new players.
- Hope (weight 0.02): Hope is centered on the desire for more content, character progression, and future improvements to the game. Players see promising ideas and potential, wishing for the game to evolve and reach its full potential in future updates and the full release.
- Confusion (weight 0.02): Confusion arises from a lack of clear in-game guidance, such as tutorials or explanations for complex mechanics like line of sight and hit rates. Players struggle to understand how to play effectively without sufficient information.
- Interest (weight 0.01): Interest is sparked by the game's differentiated and promising core gameplay concept. Players are intrigued by the unique aspects and the current state of the game, wanting to explore it further.
- Surprise (weight 0.01): Surprise is caused by unexpected game events, such as sudden and unfair deaths, or the discovery of unique and viable mechanics like cannibalism or the strength of melee combat. These moments create a sense of unexpectedness for the player.
- Annoyance (weight 0.01): Annoyance stems from frustrating user experience issues, such as the inability to change controls or keybinds, and problematic in-game mechanics like useless crafting or poor AI pathfinding. Accidental actions, like throwing melee weapons, also contribute to this feeling.
- Amusement (weight 0.01): Amusement is derived from the game's black humor, absurd situations, and dramatic death scenarios. These elements provide lighthearted and entertaining moments for players.
- Love (weight 0.01): Love for the game is expressed through a deep enjoyment of its overall style, mechanics, and the entire gameplay experience. Players feel a strong positive connection to the game.
- Curiosity (weight 0.01): Curiosity is driven by the game's potential, prompting players to want to learn more about its future development and possibilities.
- Admiration (weight 0.01): Admiration is felt for the game's challenging difficulty, as well as its strong atmosphere, enemy designs, story, pixel art, and soundtrack. These elements are highly praised by players.
- Sarcasm (weight 0): Sarcasm is used to express negative feedback, often regarding perceived bad game design, in a non-literal or ironic way. This indicates dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the game.
- Consideration (weight 0): Consideration reflects a player's thought process about potentially purchasing the full game. This indicates a positive initial impression and a weighing of future engagement.}