Monsters closing in from every side. Open ground, nowhere to hide. One sword.
VOXEL SURVIVORS is a top-down survivor-style action RPG set in a world built out of blocks. Your weapons fire on their own — all you decide is where to walk. Collect the experience your kills leave behind, pick a new weapon or upgrade every level, outlast the clock, and put the boss down.
■ One finger is enough
Touch anywhere and drag. That's the whole control scheme. Keep moving and the sword swings itself, the arrows fly themselves, the lightning falls on its own. A run takes about three minutes — one train ride, or the last few minutes before bed.
■ Or watch it play itself
Hit AUTO in the corner and the AI takes over movement and level-up choices both. It reads the distance to the pack, slips sideways before it gets surrounded, sweeps up the orbs and runs for shelter when its health drops. Leave it running, or take the controls back whenever you like.
■ Mine, build, hold the line
Walk near a tree or a boulder and you mine it automatically. Once the wood, stone and crystal you've banked covers a recipe — and things get dangerous — a shelter goes up right where you stand.
Wooden Hut — logs lashed together. A wall is still a wall.
Stone Keep — cut stone, stacked tight. Nothing gets in for a while.
Crystal Sanctum — the crystal re-weaves the walls. Only time gets through.
Monsters can't follow you inside. Arrows and fireballs break against the outside. Your health ticks back up. But the walls wear down every time something hits them, and they come down on a timer regardless. Where you build and when you step back out is the whole game.
■ Five stages
Plains, desert, caves, tundra and the Ember Deep. Different sky, different fog, different weather falling out of the air, different music. Each has its own monsters and its own boss waiting at the end.
■ 22 monsters, 5 bosses
Some charge straight in. Some hop. Some glide overhead. Some shoot from range. Some step from shadow to shadow and are behind you before you notice. Some explode on the way down. Some split when you cut them.
Outlast the clock and the Stone Sentinel, the Sand Sphinx, the Gloom Colossus, the Ice Titan and the Ember Lord come out to meet you — slams, shockwaves, beams, falling fire.
■ 9 weapons, 9 upgrades
Iron sword, bow, fireball, lightning, TNT, orbiting axes, a wave of frost, pickaxe, holy aura. Three options come up each level; take the same weapon again and it grows. Power, cooldown, area, speed, health, regeneration, pickup range, experience and armour fill out the rest. The same stage plays very differently depending on what you build.
■ Treasure worth keeping
Chests appear mid-run and give up diamonds, emeralds, void stars, old scrolls. Everything you collect becomes a permanent damage bonus, so each run leaves the next one easier. The codex records every monster and treasure you've met and leaves the rest as question marks — filling in all 22 and all 12 is its own reason to keep going.
■ Three difficulties
Start on Normal. Clear all five stages and Hard opens up; clear all five on Hard and Hell follows. Monsters get tougher, hit harder and arrive in greater numbers, and your score climbs to match. Best times are tracked separately per difficulty.
■ Missions and awards
Three missions are drawn at the start of every run: defeat 200 monsters, reach level 12, go 30 seconds without taking a hit. Complete them and the score lands immediately. There are 20 awards, covering lifetime kills, treasures collected, untouched survival time and clearing every difficulty.
■ Sound
Every note and every effect is synthesised as you play. Each stage has its own scale, tempo and drum pattern, and the same track never plays twice. The note button on the title screen switches it off.
■ Japanese and English
Switch any time from the title screen. Every monster and treasure description is written in both.
Take your one sword and walk out into the plains.