Recent reviews by Gator- (alicous)

The bones are there and it feels very familiar. If you played Enter the Gungeon, Ember knights etc you'll feel right at home. However I wanted to write down the current condition of the game and why you might not have as much as you could.

The main feel of the game comes from Enter the Gungeon. Obviously with a strong connection given the emphasis on guns. However there's the downside to Ak-xolotl that there's not actually a ton of weapons. And the majority of them end up being completely inferior to others. The main breakdown is Pistols, Sniper rifles, shotguns, smgs, assault weapons, laser weapons, melee weapons and explosives.

Some of them just do too little damage or have too many downsides to be viable. There's the starting weapon and up to about 5 unlockable in each line currently. Some of the picked up weapons will have more damage. Others will not. Additionally explosives tend to be the least fun to use as they have a timer on when they go off (plus an annoying beeping sound).

You can also only carry one weapon outside of your infinite ammo starter weapon of choice. This isn't really a problem most of the time, however you'll end up getting a gun you like and saving it for the boss. Only for it not to last the whole battle. Especially the last boss any weapon picked up will last about 25% of the battle.

When compared to a game like Enter the Gungeon, even in the first release there was a lot more choices. Guns would all feel unique and you're likely to get ammo for it to not only be able to use for the floor, but also the boss. Currently there's no means on getting ammo for guns in Ak-xolotl other than getting lucky and having the same gun drop again. So you end up going into each run with the notion that you can only rely on your starting weapon.


Currently there's not enough items in the game. All items are on a tier list (from grey, blue, gold rainbow). The odds of getting something on the rainbow list has been about 1 in every 10 runs. The gold I'll see one every three runs. Given the limited amount of options you typically end up with the same items every run.
Some items are just better than others. Some just make the game harder for yourself. For example Feather: this item spawns on bomb on you every time you roll. However much like explosives it's very hard to make work. All explosives take a few seconds to explode. However the bombs you lay behind with feather can hurt you. So you not only give yourself less area to be able to dodge from enemies, but you also can damage yourself.

Most of the higher tiered items actually are worse than the lower tiered items.


If you've played the previously mentioned games the movement will feel very similar, and it's great. You won't have any issues adjusting. My only complaint here is that dodge rolling has a weird quirk. You always dodge towards the last direction you moved. This seems like a little thing to note, however given the roll is straight from Enter the Gungeon, there will be times that you will want to roll one direction but you start the roll before you get the direction key down. You will put yourself in harms way every time. Just make sure you know that and you'll be fine!


So this is the main thing that AK-xolotl does very unique. You can raise baby Ak-xolotls into a number of different classes. It sounds like a fun idea! However currently most classes feel pretty similar. The latest update fixed this a bit. But they still mostly feel the same.

But the game starts you with the class that is simply the best as it can heal itself and reshuffle offered items. Both of those things are particularly great as you can make sure you get items that actually help you; and you can heal.


This game is stingy with healing. Other than the ability that lets you heal, you don't have much means of healing. Here's the only way you can gain health:

You chose a life up room to clear. This will give you a new health that's healed, but you don't gain any more healing.

You get an item that increases your health, which does the same as above.

You get an item that heals you, but then you waist that selection on something else that could give you extra damage or another ability to help in the long term.

You can heal at the fire after a boss every floor, but only for one health.

You can heal at an unlockable tea room, but only for 3 health.

So without the healing ability, you have to play perfectly or you're going to have a really hard time getting runs done.


The babies are kind of an annoying distraction. While fun to find them and there's a lot of really fun references the process to raise them is annoying. Essentially you have to nuture them between runs. Which means you do a small minigame which will raise their happiness. When you get to the max then you can age them up. Then this is where you can create your classes. That's totally fine.

Where my problem comes with this is that you need to get the happiness up so you can drain it to get permanent upgrades. Plus you'll end up with quite a few babies across runs. So after every run you'll have to go back to base, do the same 5 minigames for 10+ babies to you can hopefully get their happiness to maximum and then drain it. This has been made easier since I've done it myself as they replaced the location of the drain crystal. But the repetition gets boring.


Okay here's the really bad part, I currently cannot play my game anymore. I was nearly done getting it 100% complete however I have a bug that gives me a black screen with no way to play. I almost didn't want to recommend because of this, but the game is still fun and you can have fun up until the time. Given the developer has been quick to fix things so far I believe they'll get rid of this issue as well.

There's other bugs to know as well. Any settings you change will not stick for when you start up the game, unless you go to the settings menu. It will then load your settings. So any time you change controls, language etc you have to go to the settings menu for them to re-register.

Other issues are incorrect buttons being displayed for different interactions. The default interact key is f, so when you talk to NPCs, or one boss that talks to you you press the F key to advance the dialog. But the game will display "N" as the button to press. When you press F the first time it will then change the button to press to say "F" but then you have to press it again to advance.

There's other bugs where enemies bullets can get duplicated, and other small issues. Once again I'm sure this will be fixed overtime.


For the price, right now as the game is. It is fun. But it's not a game you're going to put a ton of time in. At 14 hours I'm almost 100% done. From the road map it looks like a lot more content will be added which will be great to see!

It's going to scratch that EtG, Nuclear throne itch. But not with the same quality.

I hope the developers can really add on and make this game have more of it's own personality.

7/10

Currently on an I9 9900k, RTX3090, 64 GB ram, it will not run above 20-30 FPS. No fixes work.

When the game works, it's fun to play.

I'm not huge on the specialist system since that means you'll be running into situations where you'll just be shooting your own character in a fire fight. Just seems a bit odd.

Once the fix the optimization I'll review but for now it's all screen show.

It's alright, I might try another run sometime

Only problem, not enough vodka