Recent reviews by Cat

Good game. Played a bunch of the first one. Played a bunch of this one.

Have an issue sometimes where everyone starts running in place and I cant see zeds and this weird limbo state doesnt end unless I leave the game and join back, and despite this incredibly frustrating issue (when it happens anyway) I still recommend this game because I still play it and have no idea how to fix it and just hope you dont have the issue that I have.

This is one of my favorite games, updates are EXTREMELY slow, and I don't really know if it will ever be finished, although the last couple of updates from last year seem to suggest its close.

I first played it in 2017 and since then it has gotten some very sporadic updates adding new story content and polishing the arcade mode more.I played with friends back then and we had a good time, with what there was at the time.

If they ever finish this game, I would change my review to highly recommend it. Like I've said so far, I really have nothing but positive praise for this game, both the Story AND the Arcade mode. My one and only gripe is with the rate of development updates.

Fun game. Sometimes the physics get a little weird, I put a sectional couch on a forklift and the forklift ascended to godhood and just floated straight up into the sky. Took the couch off, and apparently it was holding the forklift back from its ascension because then it just continued rising indefinitely into the sky.

One thing I find frustrating is during edit mode, the objects sometimes just start vibrating to the left and back and throw off my placement and just eventually fall off the car. Really stupid, and doesnt feel intentional.

Also, I think you should be able to maybe use the scroll wheel or something while placing an object to determine how far away it is from the surface I'm placing it against. For instance, when using the truck, I cant place a fridge on its back in the bed of the truck, because the little sides of the bed go up a bit. But I should be able to lift the fridge up, and have it end up sitting on the edges of the bed of the truck, but in order to do this I have to do a little janky manuever where I place another object in the bed of the truck, balance the fridge on that, then grab the object below and remove it so the fridge falls onto the edges. Really unintuitive.

praise the honkmother

A beautiful retro game, and a fun VR game. Makes you feel like you're back at the arcade playing those games with the physical gun shaped controllers, but from inside the screen

My main thought while playing this game is "Man, I cant wait to play this after its had a few years to get a bunch of updates that get it to around the kinda of game we all thought this would be on release day!"

What a lot of people don't understand is that this game is a passion project, and that brings with it good and bad sides. The good being that the devs truly love this game, and anything they add they have spent a lot of their hard effort and time on making it the best they feel it can be.
The bad being that as passion projects tend to go, this is not their main job. They all work full time jobs and do not regularly meet up in person to work on this game, and therefore updates are absolutely slow and not as quick as a bigger, better funded team would be able to pump out - but that also means when you get an update, you know its going to be a good one.

The devs are active on their forums, and if you want to read their weekly dev updates, they are here: https://www.baremettle.com/forums/index.php?forums/coffee-diary.25/
If you want to talk to them directly, they are responsive to comments on the Coffee Diaries linked above, and chat with the community in their discord as well, which is here: https://www.baremettle.com/forums/index.php?threads/baremettle-discord.8843/

As far as the actual game and its current state, its definitely not finished, so coming into this thinking you're getting a finished product, like all other early access titles, is just dumb. The gameplay is there, and it is fun, especially if your main interest in this project right now is the combat and physics. I've spent a good part of my current playtime playing the Arena mode, where you'e basically just going into matches to fight and level up so you can get better gear and fight some more. That alone could be its own tech demo, but the devs are also working on more of a story update which is where the dungeon crawling comes into play.
In the dungeon aspect of the game, combat is not as constant, and in fact not even required for the most part, though the further down you go things will be more instantly aggressive towards you and you may not have much of a choice. Direction is very old school, since your main tools for figuring out where exactly you are is a piece of paper with the outline of the dungeon floor drawn onto it, and a compass. No map markers that tell you where you are, no minimap, no waypoints. You don't really have a main goal, you kind of set your goal yourself. You can mess around with the newer addition to the game, Thaumaturgy, which at the moment only includes mind magic, though there are a couple other schools they have planned for the future. You can go all exterminator and try and kill every undead and other creature you come across, which is kind of what I do.

Its really up to you, maybe later we will get an end goal (there is a slight mention of a necromancer that may be the big baddie of the dungeon later on) but right now, its best to look at this game as a tech demo. Because essentially, thats what all of Exanima is - a big tech demo showcasing different elements of this new, unique style of game that Bare Mettle is working on. If you aren't aware already, Exanima serves as a prelude to the larger project the Devs have in store, which is titled Sui Generis. The dungeon you explore in Exanima, and all the mechanics worked on for Exanima, will all be part of Sui Generis once it is complete.

P.S: Also, they do plan on adding multiplayer, and I must say as fun as this game is in it's current state, it will be so much better once you can screw around with the physics-based world along with friends.

Charming game with a unique mechanic where you are not just a hero diving into dungeons for loot and fame, but you also run a shop and sell off the items you find in the dungeons to make money and sometimes use that loot to craft better gear. Not really a roguelike like make people say, I'd classify it more as a roguelite, but to some people those are two words for the same genre.

I loved every minute of this game, but if I had to give some criticism I would definitely say that the 5th door was a huge letdown once I opened it, I didn't feel a huge sense of accomplishment for doing so, and the story after that point (pretty sure this is the DLC) felt super tacked on. And, honestly, the main reason it felt so unnatural was that the text from all the NPCs suddenly had way worse grammar, and was not punctuated properly, and none of the upgrades afterward came from the same places, it was either an almost hidden section of the blacksmiths menu, or an NPC that sat outside your shop until you bought the upgrade from him, etc. Just felt very strange and I didn't even end up playing the DLC because the game already acted like it was over and gave me the "good job!" screen. I've seen plenty of games do after-credits content much better, (heavy nod to the pokemon mystery dungeon series) and this is not one of them, despite how fun the actual game was.

I made a spell that shoots three rocks that bounce around and home in on enemies.
When one of those rocks hits, it recasts itself.
It recasts itself basically until my mana is depleted, usually resulting in hundreds of homing rocks that bounce around the battlefield killing anything that they can see.

You might be wondering "well what if the enemy is immune to earth magic?"
I wondered this too. So I equipped a special wand that makes my earth spells ignore resistance.

I am now the rock mage.
And nothing can stop me.

Life tips from Heat Signature: If you accidentally blow out a window in space, and find yourself suffocating its cold vacuum, just get up and try again.