Games worth discovering

Metal Mind is the perfect choice for a more casual dungeon crawler experience

3K View2023-09-20

Metal Mind

8.7

MechaRoguelikeRPGPixel

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SHOULD I PLAY METAL MIND?

Play it. Metal Mind is a sci-fi roguelite dungeon crawler about robots fighting other robots. This solid game may not do anything revolutionary, but it provides an approachable, entertaining dive into a genre that can often be intimidating.

TIME PLAYED

I played Metal Mind for three hours. I’ve beaten six bosses and traveled through three different biome across fifteen-plus runs. The length of each run varied wildly depending on my success; some ended with death within five minutes, while my best run went for nearly an hour.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT METAL MIND?

• Roguelite lootin’ and shootin’. Metal Mind provides a classic roguelite experience with minimal changes to the formula. Beating up robots across levels, finding new weapons and armors, and upgrading stats and augments was a fun and entertaining experience. While the game can feel unbalanced at times, Metal Mind is still a solid dungeon crawler that encapsulates almost everything games of this genre should be.

• Killer robots. The dozen different enemy types I encountered in Metal Mind looked unique and featured different attack patterns to keep me on my toes. Not only did I enjoy turning these vicious robots into scrap, but I had fun conceptualizing tactics and play styles to survive the varied groups of mechanical warriors that came my way.

• Visual style...sort of. Metal Mind features a pixel art style with bold outlines and great character designs. It has some pretty big issues with color that I’ll explain below, but I really like how the game looks on the whole.

WHAT NEEDS IMPROVEMENT IN METAL MIND?

• Unbalanced gameplay. Metal Mind is overflowing with weapons, armor, and upgrades for me to find, but an awful lot of these weren’t terribly useful. Finding weaker weapons like shotguns, swords, and pistols often doomed my run, while picking up a machine gun or grenade launcher was often the key to really making progress. Not every run in a roguelite is going to be a success, but Metal Mind could definitely still benefit from balancing some of its weapons to feel less uesless.

• A few technical issues. Enemies in Metal Mind sometimes glitched through walls and warped to the other side. This was enough to occasionally catch me off guard and get me killed. Hopefully this issue gets fixed before release.

• Color and font choices. While some parts of Metal Mind look great, the font has an unpolished, amateur look that distracts from the stylish character designs. Even more unfortunate, though, is how the game's environments are colored. The levels use warm, vibrant colors that often clashed with each other and made it difficult to keep up with the fast-paced action.

• Localization. While it wasn’t hard for me to understand Metal Mind’s mechanics, some of the in-game text isn’t written well or translated correctly.

💬 Are you going to play Metal Mind or will you pass on it? Let me know in the comments!