Neon Abyss

If you seek a good game, BUY NEON ABYSS.
I have played in different popular rogue-like games: Dead Cells, Enter the Gungeon, The Binding of Isaac and others. So I have some experience in this genre. There are many references, my favourite is hero Saya who is the analogue of hero Katana Zero.
This game has amazing graphics and admissible background sounds. I recommend this game to everybody.
Developers made a good game and I hope they will maintain it in the future.

Full video review:
Summarized version below!
Take The Binding of Isaac and Enter the Gungeon, change the perspective to 2D side-scroller, and slap a neon aesthetic on top of it, and you end up with something like Neon Abyss, the latest indie to take a stab at the action roguelike genre.
Graphics:
So right off the bat, the game immediately sets itself apart from the crowd with its bright, neon-infused aesthetic. It’s vibrant, it’s colorful, and it works surprisingly well for this type of game. The sprites, while simple, are clean and easy to differentiate between with the backgrounds being bit more detailed, yet still fitting the overall theme. The projectiles on the other hand, are very brightly colored to contrast with all of this. It not only gives the game its defining look, but makes it much easier to track what is going on. Granted, some upgrades will make this impossible once you have a hundred or so projectiles going all over the place, but that just comes with the genre.
Core Gameplay:
As for the core gameplay, I would say that the game does a decent job at tackling the genre. The combat feels fluid and encourages constant movement, hits feel impactful and it’s not like you’re attacking paper enemies, the enemies themselves are varied as are the boss fights, and the customization across the board definitely leaves a lot of room for experimentation. As with other such roguelikes, there are a bunch of items and upgrades to be found in each run. This includes new weapons with their own passive and active abilities, simple stat upgrades, passives that change the way combat and movement work, and a cool “pet” system that plays similarly to Isaac‘s familiars.
Pet System:
The pets work by finding eggs, which then follow you around until they hatch into a familiar or hatch into nothing, it’s a random chance. These familiars have a bunch of different effects, ranging from picking up items to tanking projectiles for you. However, they also have their own HP and will die after some time and not all of them are helpful either, there are some that can make your runs more difficult. It’s a cool mechanic in that it is entirely separate from the regular upgrades and items you usually find, yet still can synergize with them.
Item Synergy:
In fact, on the topic of synergy, I feel that that is something the game does pretty well. Even excluding the pets, a lot of the base items can synergize well with each other, such as the time I found an upgrade that caused me to lose HP before shields and another upgrade that increased my weapon damage based on how many shields I had. That combination had me dishing out a ton of damage due to how many shields I was able to stack.
However, the reverse is also true. You can just as easily pick up something that makes it much harder to play, such as that time I got exploding bullets, but had a pet that blocked projectiles in front of me, including my own. Of course, this resulted in me having to time my shots to avoid hitting said pet and having a bullet explode right on top of me. The RNG can be pretty brutal in this way, but I find that that is what makes these kinds of games fun. You can get a completely broken combination and cheese an entire run and then go into the next having an upgrade or two that you have to actively work around in order to succeed. The gameplay fluctuates a lot in this way and it definitely makes for a more addicting experience if anything.
Gameplay Complaints:
That said, my main complaint would be with the game’s lack of depth compared to other games in the genre. Sure, the synergy and all of that offered by the items and the room variety is decent, but it doesn’t feel like enough to really give the game the same sense of replayability. For example, while the items themselves may have different sprites and descriptions, a lot of them offer the same old “damage up” or “movement up” without really offering anything unique outside of that. You slowly unlock more unique items as you play, but it still felt like the majority I picked up fell into the simple “stats up” category.
And then you have the active abilities (the one’s tied to weapons activated with a right click, usually at a cost). In all my time playing the game, I have not once come across an active ability that I found myself using more than maybe two or three times in a given run. Most of them are simply too expensive to warrant using or have such specific use cases that I forget that I even have them. Really, the only one that I found myself using across multiple runs was the one that granted temporary flight until you leave the room, but even that was only to pick up treasure that would have otherwise been out of reach, I never used it for combat. Such active abilities are a great mechanic in theory, but the game doesn’t really use it to its full potential.
Performance:
As for the technical side to the game, I had little issue there. The game looks great and runs well at 1440p with an uncapped framerate. The included Vsync though did not appear to work correctly. It would constantly shift my framerate from 60 to the 155 allowed by my monitor, so I ended up disabling it. Other than that though it was smooth sailing and I never ran into any crashes, freezing, bugs, or really any technical issue at all, maybe I was just lucky. The game recommends using a controller, but I found the keyboard and mouse controls to be preferable, although both definitely felt fine.
Overall:
So given all of that, I would say that Neon Abyss is a pretty easy recommendation for fans of the genre. The combat feels great, the movement is fluid, the exploration is fun, and the synergy offered by the different upgrades and such definitely can make for some interesting runs. It may lack the overall depth seen in similar titles, but its a fun enough roguelike that I can see myself returning to from time to time.
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Sooo, i never wrote any reviews, but after playing this game i felt strong need to do it.
This review is specificly l for roguelike fans like me.
So first - game is great. It has awesome style, tons of items, interactions, overall i like it and enjoy playing, but there's not a few, but quite a lot of but's.
So i played pretty much every decent roguelike out there, and after this experience i feel that this game is have a LOT of very frustrating things in its core mechanics, movement and some interactions.
1) - your character does not follow your crosshair with gun - and this feels very off, especially because when you fire - your gun points in the direction of fire. this is confusing sometimes
2) this game is not easy and it doesn't offer you a lot of mechanics to dodge- you can dodge only by your movement and jumps. This is not so bad, but it's bad very often, because of few next things. For example, in bullet hell like enter the gungeon, you always have your i-frames during rolls
3) characters throw grenades only in the direction they facing, which creates a lot of fucked up moments - this is super confusing, because your character doesn't face the direction of your crosshair. I played 4 hours in the time of writing, and i missed 90% of my grenade throws because of this very unnatural and inconvinient mechanic. Maked grenades almost useless in battle, and hard to use for other things.
4)Because game can be messy in the matters of blood, explosions, other particles - the fact that you don't have any tool (besides one character or special items) to dodge in the core mechanics - it can be very frustrating. Just doesn't feel right.
And that's just 4 things i encounter in every run, without spoiling some things i can't tell you more, but i counted 11 things overall which are quite irritating or straight up bad in this game.
Honestly, if this game was in early acces (and it feels like early access :c ) - i would not complain a thing, i would just write bug reports and feedback to the developers, but the fact that it released with such unpolished gameplay and core mechanics...
Anyways, overall game is fun to play, great roguelike, but o wouldn't put it on one shelf with something like enter the gungeon, or isaac for sure. I really hope developers will eventually polish a lot of things here.
Sorry for grammar mistakes, english is not my native language.

I want to start this out by saying i do enjoy this game, even if it's not one of my favorites. But im very conflicted about it (and that's why i've been compelled to write a review, for the first time ever on here) there's a lot of things to dislike in this game. Every level is basically the same couple of types of enemies but with a different coloring, or very slight change. (now instead of just floating towards you while brown, it floats towards you while blue and fires a shot! etc)
None of the items ive had so far really feel like...they impact the run, they upgrade your bullets damage, give you an extra jump, fire 2 bullets instead of two, but there's nothing that really changes the playstyle or run of the game in any major way. Compare this to games like Gungeon or Isaac, where many items have the capacity to change how you play--or at least impact your weapon/tears outside of "do more damage, bullets go faster, pick up __ and gain __".
Those two factors can really make runs feel tedious a lot of the times, when nothing really changes.
That being said! Personally I find the gameplay itself very enjoyable, i like the art and style of the game in general, the concept/aesthetic itself is also very nice. The follower system (the eggs) is fun, and i like the variety of them. There's a way in-game to preview items you've unlocked, and even test them out and ban them (and yes! this can include followers you dislike) which is very much appreciated! As well as the way to unlock secret rooms (both red and purple) at least gives some variance. And I like the range of new rooms you can unlock through the in game currency unlocking system.
If you like roguelikes/lites, and/or shoot shoot side scrollers, i'd give it a try, but don't expect something incredible on the same level as some of the big hitter roguelikes. .

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Neon Abyss is a twin-stick roguelite platformer with a ton of outside references, much like Isaac and Gungeon. In this game, you choose from the available characters and take a dive into the Abyss, which becomes progressively deeper (more levels) as you beat the game multiple times in its permanent progression. Killing bosses also drops credits that you can use to unlock new things for future runs or to instill a permanent rule change for future runs. What stands out about this game is the large amount of power-ups and loot that you get during any lasting run that makes the game seem overwhelmingly silly, but still fun.
Starting up this game, you get automatically a sense of the bright colors and flashing lights you can expect to see in playing. The pixel artwork is really pretty to look at. The sprite, objects, explosions, bullets, etc. animations are all done with plenty of detail to make the action/reaction gameplay very enjoyable to look at.
After a short tutorial and a boss fight that you cannot lose, you are then tossed into your first run, so good luck! The game is very responsive playing on the keyboard + mouse or with a controller, so you will be able to take your pick and dive in. As with any such roguelite games where you will be expected to die a lot and then improve over time. The most important aspect of playing these games is the knowledge about the game's mechanics that you cannot get except by repeated exposure.
So your task is to go from room to room, clear out all of the enemies and loot what you can, then move on. The doors lock up after you enter and trigger the enemies to spawn, so you have to clear them out to move on. Some rooms will not have enemies but may have items, consumables, or chests/destructible rocks, etc. There are a number of different resources to manage in this game, including the expected coins, keys, and bombs, but also purple crystals, which are important for opening some doors, chests, or for active skills attached to many weapons that will use these up as well.
And then there are followers, a lot of followers. When you see an egg on the ground, you can pick it up and it will have a potential to hatch into a follower or upgrade one you already have. These followers each have their own abilities and traits, and to balance the fact that you can get so many in each run, they all have their respective HP and if they take too many hits, they will die. Many of them have an associated death effect, so there are definitely times when there are plenty of fireworks on the screen.
The bosses are randomized from a pool, so even if you have trouble making it past the first couple of levels for a while, you will still be seeing different bosses from run to run. This is the case for the non-final boss floors. The game starts being 5 levels. After beating it once, it becomes 7 levels, then 8 after the next time you beat it, with a couple more extending progressions after that. These pre-set "final" levels always have the same bosses within.
After the very first run, you will be able to change the difficulty of your next run, choose your starting character, and also pay up some credits at the bar to do some permanent unlocking for future runs. If you are unhappy about the way you handled a particular situation or part of a run, you can always write down the seed number that is displayed upon death and you can enter it again for a repeat of the same Abyss set up. Using a seeded run will stop you from getting achievements, but will definitely teach you how to get better from your own mistakes.
I find that any run that lasts for a reasonable length of time leads to the playing character becoming rather over-powered, in a rather fun and also messy way. Your bullets will increase in size as your weapon becomes more powerful. You may have increased number of bullets, etc. It becomes a little bit more difficult to see enemy fire if you get to this point. But more often than not, it becomes much easier to deal with the enemies also. But there are some teleporting enemies, or enemies whose bullets break into smaller ones, that when you are filling up the screen with your own awesome firepower, they can be a bit difficult to spot. Example here where all of the on-screen bullets are my own:
I think that there is definitely room for improvement, many of these areas are being addressed and tested in an experimental branch. They are actively working on bug fixes, but still have some that need to be addressed. It's really nice to see that the developers are paying attention to the players' feedback and concerns. I am not really sure how many bosses there are total, but after a few runs, you starting getting used to many of the bosses, each with its movement/attacking patterns.

Gameplay
Twin-stick roguelite platformer with a lot of items to loot each run, with their own synergies that make the game rather fun.
Controls
KB+M works fine, controller works great. You can rebind your keys inside the game.
Graphics
Nice pixel artwork and animations.
Music & Sounds
Sound effects are good and seem to fit the game well. Music can get repetitive after a few hours though, so you may want to listen to something else after a while.
Pricing
Base price is $19.99, pretty reasonable for what the game has to offer. I wish the game wouldn't have the DLC already on launch that's going to incur an extra cost for people who buy after the first week post-release. I have only unlocked one more character so far beyond the starting ones, and by the looks of it, there will be a few more.
Conclusion
Neon Abyss is quite a lot of fun. Its permanent progression system with unlocks, Abyss increase in size, new enemies/bosses makes it fun to keep going back for more, no matter whether your last run ended in success or failure. These developers definitely listen to the users and have been implementing/trying plenty of changes in the experimental branch that anyone can access. There are still bugs to be fixed and some areas that need polish, hopefully everything gets taken care of sooner than later.
There's a seeming adaptation that the game takes to the player, in terms of difficulty, even within the same preset difficult of Easy, Normal, or Hard. From what I understand, there's an even more difficult setting waiting to be unlocked. I wish the DLC given to players during the first week after launch would have been just worked into the game as part of the game instead of having to pay for two additional characters if you happen to buy the game after the first week. While the price isn't unreasonable for this game, Isaac and Gungeon do offer more content and more replayability than what's present here.
I would still absolutely recommend this game, because of the enjoyment contained within.
I received the product for free. I did not receive any compensation to write this review. The opinions represented here are entirely my own and were not influenced in any way.

Colourful, bright & a lot of fun. It's a game that offers a lot. The best recommendation is buy it if you're into roguelites, isaac, gungeon, etc, or wait for a good sale if you're not into these games.

Well, I'm conflicted. This game is honestly incredibly fun, and fairly unique. Plenty of references and tongue in cheek call-outs to other games/series/movies etc.
Pros:
-Colorful lighting is very aesthetically pleasing
-Fantastic Music score, slaps
-Interesting enemy types/patterns. You have to pay attention to which enemies spawn where
-Interesting bosses, learning their patterns was fun, specifically the managers.
-Fun items and Guns (Like i said, references and the character model changes are fun!)
Cons:
-Some rooms feel like damage is unavoidable, and a few enemies spawn inside you sometimes (especially in challenge rooms.
-Game is honestly incredibly easy. I failed 2 total runs between playing the tutorial and finishing the game, and that was because explosive bullets caused me to suicide.
-Enemies, while varied, don't seem to have a pattern. You'll fight the same enemies in the first room your explore that you fight one room before Ares/Athena fight.
-The wisdom crystal/chest can be triggered by enemies. Often, it'll spawn and instantly get hit by an enemy bullet, ruining your buildup to the particular room.
Overall, I give this game a 7.5/10, with a few suggestions that are entirely personal.
1) Make the wisdom crystals/chests NOT triggerable by enemies, the RNG on that isn't fair or fun.
2) The ability to make your character model smaller via items (or even a crouch feature?) would allow for better dodging ability.
3)Possibly changing the enemy types as you get further, (or in the specific Ares/Athena floors ) as the game feels like one long level till the end.
Truly, this game is worth a purchase. If you're good at these platform shooter roguelites, you'll find this game best on normal/hard, but easy mode holds your hand enough to enjoy it even if you're not incredible at it. Take this review with a grain of salt, as I play these types of games often, and have fun!