Dust & Neon

Amazing top down shooter. Art style reminds me of Borderlands. Not too difficult and really fun.

Recommended 10/10

6.5/10
Dust and Neon is a flawed but good game.
Pros:
* The gameplay is fun. The manual reload mechanic is really cool, and it gives a deliberate feel to the gameplay (at least parts of it). I had several golden moments where I felt like John Wick; a master of precision, walking into a room, evaluating the number enemies, and taking them out, one by one.
* The sound design is also good; guns generally sound punchy, pickups feel good to collect.
* 5 of the 6 bosses were really fun, and I found them just challenging enough to be fun without feeling unbeatable.
* The art style is cartoony and cool.
Cons:
* Money is ridiculously scarce for some reason. I spent 50% of my playtime robbing trains, because those missions give you the most money.
* Because of this, it's far too punishing when you lose. If you've gotten some really cool guns, they're just gone. Good guns are expensive, so it's possible to lose several times in a row and be stuck with garbage weapons because you just can't afford anything else.
* The lack of cash also makes the game grindy. You can't afford weapons or perks, so you need to grind missions to get money to afford better gear to take down the bosses which basically require better gear to take out.
* One of the bosses was all about dodging hazards coming out of the floor. and I did not find this fun at all. It felt incredibly cheap to lose to, and if you don't invest skill points into the faster dodge recharge, I feel like this boss would be next to impossible to play against.
Conclusion:
The game looks good, sounds good, and has good gameplay. But the poor in-game economy makes it kind of fragile at times, and it forces you to grind missions in order to not go broke. That said, if this game looks interesting to you, I actually do recommend checking it out, especially if it's on sale. It had plenty of moments to shine, and when it did, it was pretty cool.

Games seems good at first, but get grindy and repetitive eventually.

Gateway drug into Roguelite games. It's very simple and repetitive, but still triggers that dopamine release when you kill a horde of enemies and collect a bunch of loot. I wish the maps had some randomisation in terms of layout to keep it more fresh.
Perfect for short sessions.
Runs perfectly on Steam Deck.
I have a couple of critiques:
* bomb run missions spike up in difficulty too much, I hardly managed to complete a couple of medium difficulty, I haven't even tried the hard ones;
* challenge maps also spike up a lot compared to normal missions, especially second stage forward
* it was quite easy to find the perfect guns and stick with those, with no incentive to switch. I did out of boredom and suffered the downgrade, regretting the switch despite I kept on upgrading my stats, which were making the guns better. (I managed to find the guns again and allowed me to get through the bosses quite easily.)
* the special chips and drinks that upgrade your stats for a mission or two are easily skippable for the most part until you get to last bosses or need to tackle the most difficult map modes.

Looks pretty, fun mechanics, nice upgrade system, good difficulty ramp, plays great on Steam Deck. I've seen people who watch trailers say that the visuals for the reload mechanic are distracting, but they really aren't when you're actually playing the game. I dig it.

Short, sweet, does what it sets out to do
A twin-stick looter shooter with robots in a wild west theme
Movement and aiming are very solid with a simple but very effective cover-shooting mechanic
The colours and aesthetics of the world match the genre and the vibe of what should be two incongruent themes, so well done
The sound design of the guns, as well as the reloading gimmick are quite satisfying to hear/see, even hours into the game Although I did find a few times the gun on the screen does block the vision of the map especially when moving down
Not much of a story, or perhaps just enough to get you straight into the action and shooting up mechs and robots alike
Missions are selected via the hub base and have enough variety for an indie game of this size
If you're farming for specific guns, or constantly dying and losing weapons then sure, you may be repeating the same missions fairly often
Otherwise, this game will juuust hit that right balance of time spent and maintaining engagement + enjoyment for the player
TLDR:
Short, simple twin-stick shooter with smooth and fluid controls/movement
Depending on your skill level, it may require repetition of levels to 'grind' especially if you die often
Cool aesthetic
Not much of a story if any

Played for 3.5 hours and so far I like it a lot. Simple mechanics, fun and exciting combat, nice artwork... All in all, money well spent.