Metallic Child

released on Sep 15, 2021

“Grab, hurl, and eliminate” Rogue-lite Core-Action!! A large-scale rebellion erupts within the spacecraft “Life Stream.” With the help of you, Rona, an android known as “Metallic Child,” stands up against a fleet of massive robots to stop the plot devised by her own creator, Doctor Irene.


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It's pretty good, even if it's a bit janky.
It's like a mix of Mega Man with a top down beat em up + rougelike mechanics. Not a big fan of Roguelikes but i enjoyed this game a lot.

The combat is a lot of fun, but it does have one big problem: The roll feels inconsistent.
It has a tendency to get stuck on enemies, it doesn't travel very far making it so some attacks hit you even if you dodge them and it has very few I-Frames.
Once i got used to it it wasn't that bad but it feels like i'm constantly playing around it's jankyness instead of mastering it.

A mechanic i really liked was the grab, it does a lot of damage, you can throw enemies against walls or other enemies to deal more damage and it can interact with the stage hazards helping you kill enemies faster. Most levels have their own gimmick to keep it fresh.

There's a few smaller annoyances like the minimap not telling you where are your items on the map, things being too expensive/getting too little money and two horrible bike levels that at least are very easy to beat.

The roguelike aspect of the mini cores can be confusing at first but it's actually super simple once you're playing. Their timed nature is a double edged sword and can make runs very volatile. A horrible run can be saved and turned into a cakewalk with the right minicores or a really good run can go to shit because your good minicores ran out of time and you're stuck with bad weapons/permanent cores. Nothing that playing well can't fix, when i had to fight the final boss i had no minicores, my permanent cores were awful and my weapon were some tier B Fists and i still managed to win.

I really hope this game gets a sequel, i want to see what happens next in the story and to see the gameplay get some polish, this game has the potential to be really amazing, it's just a few tweaks away from greatness.

why does this M rated game have a child friendly mode in the settings.

I won't be the first to say that I don't care much for roguelikes. However, I am a sucker for really flashy games, and/or cute protagonists. When this game managed to fly by my radar prior to its release, I knew I had to check it out.

The game's actually structured vaguely like Mega Man X, if you can believe it. You choose which boss you want to fight, you travel down (randomized) floors themed after them, and when you defeat them, you get their powers. Also akin to Mega Man X, there are some stinkers of design choices here. It genuinely feels to me like either the enemies you fight have little to no windup in their attack animations, or Rona's dodge roll doesn't have enough invincibility frames (or both!). Rona also tends to get stuck on walls and enemies, which can be irritating when you're just trying to get out of the way of the killer roomba that's trying to grab you. The game also has a couple of on-rails gimmick stages. I actually quite enjoyed the tunnel stage, but the space-shooter stage was a complete clusterfuck, and the design team really should've gone back to the drawing board on that one.

The use of the term "rogue-lite" is certainly appropriate here; You'll always have access to your most basic moves, it's moreso a top-down action game with several randomized elements. One of the most notable elements is the "core" system. You'll obtain cores via various means, and they each give you a completely randomized effect, positive or negative. Negative cores, or "bugged" cores aren't always a curse though. Having three cores of any type puts Rona into "Core-Connect" mode, enhancing her abilities across the board. Cores are constantly depleting resources, and are often getting overwritten with different cores, meaning you'll be changing your playstyle on the fly quite often, and this is definitely the strongest aspect of the gameplay in my eyes.

I feel as though presentation is this game's strongest suit. I love how the game is framed with you, the player, viewing and controlling Rona remotely via satellite uplink (internet in the year 2087 must be fuckin' wild). The UI reflects that very well, especially with some bugged cores that directly affect the "camera feed", like blocking the UI with fake pop-ups. All the graphics are super shiny, as if everything's got a chrome finish. All of the art is excellent. Animations are nice and fluid, but sometimes too animated. The 2D character portraits are particularly obsessed with tweening. It's worse for some characters than others, and I did find it distracting on more than one occasion. (One of the 3D model's animations was particularly unnatural as well.)

Overall, despite a few major stumbles, I do really enjoy this game and fully recommend it. If you're still not sure, there is a demo for the game on PC. Rona is an innocent cinnamon roll who must be protected at all costs.

Decent Roguelike game with some very annoying things. Like enemy attack patterns that you really can't do anything about but take damage, some stages having way to much going on with enemies and stage hazards which can make things very annoying. VERY terrible space ship shooter sequence that just played horrible. But with that all said the core game is very fun and I really like how the perm upgrades and timed upgrades work it really makes you think and makes you mix and match on what might work the best. Some people have issues with the difficulty spike later on in the game but personally I was 100% okay with this since I found the early levels way to easy I think the spike in toughness was needed.

Story was okay at best with a terrible ending that leaves off on a huge cliffhanger for an ending that we may never see lol.

Overall I do not regret my time with this game but as I continued more and more and more the game just started to become way more annoying as it introduced very annoying enemies later on. I bought this game on sale and I would 100% recommend this game on sale!

It doesn't really have anything super unique, and it has some sincerely frustrating bullshit in the form of unreactable attack patterns and other combat oddities, but altogether it's pretty decent. The music is bangin and the combat loop is satisfying if you're on a roll. I like the colors and general industrial-space aesthetic they've got going on, and the models are pretty high quality too from what I can tell.