Pro-tip: you can freely reroll your drink selection by Save+Quit then Continue. Tune the game to your difficulty by re-rolling abilities as needed.

Definitely a grower, OTXO is a tough as nails twin stick roguelike inspired by Hotline Miami. The ability modifiers really open this game up in cool ways, dual wield SMGs, get a support drone, splatter enemies. All paired with a combo system that rewards wreckless aggression. Sprint from enemy to enemy to rack up a combo, then use that gold to buy more abilities so you can build a better combo to get more gold etc etc etc.

There's a few balancing issues with some abilities being near useless while others being almost required for a good run (I'm looking at you drone support and dual wielding). Additionally readability can be a bit tough due to the limited color palette.

Overall though, this hooked me hard for a couple of days, a solid experience.

A disappointingly shallow Hotline Miami-like experience. After about an hour or so the core gameplay begins to feel samey and it goes from being angry at the game but having fun, to being angry at how genuinely poorly designed it is. Enemies who clump up together in very small rooms in the later levels with little variations in tactics or core gameplay other than maybe 2 new enemies types and the levels being much larger, but unlike Hotline Miami, no shift-look feature to look around and zoom out of the level to see them from offscreen. It also doesn't help that the hotline miami styled trial and error gameplay doesn't work here since it's a one-life game. The smash-tv like formula hotline has just doesn't work for a rogue like.

OTXO is one of the few roguelites I ever finished, but it feels way simpler compared to others in its genre. I generally agree with people when they say it gains very little from being one, but I still found reason to finish it. The background story is... strange, I really feel like it's not present enough to bear bringing up in the actual game, the drinks system is fine but can feel a bit arbitrary, the gunplay rules and the music is great, but after completing one run I don't think I'm going to do so again.

I've kind of hit a wall with this, progress wise, and as much as I loved it initially - I can't say it's really hooking me in to break through that wall.

It makes a tremendous first impression. It looks and sounds incredible; a super satisfying top down shooter that looks to expand on some of the groundwork laid down by Hotline Miami. Lofty goals! But I think it does an admirable job, with its own innovations and sense of style that makes it feel more unique. But as the difficulty spikes and I don't really feel that I'm 'learning' per se - I think I'll just take a breather from it right now.

Hard to stick a rating on it, so I won't just yet.

fills the hotline miami shaped hole in my heart by improving virtually every single element. the straightforward way of saying it is that guns feel very good and killing people in that game feel very good. drinks makes it feel even more good to kill people. its a game that feels extremely good being enhanced by guns that sound like actual guns and good music. i did not care or even looked anything about the story but tbh i dont think it really matters much in this game. Main problem is that for a roguelike after you finished once there really isnt that much of a reason to continue.

A less melee and tactics focused Hotline Miami with some roguelike elements that gives you a quick to recharge slow motion toggle and dodge move to fight quick reacting enemies.

Your characters puts on a mask and suddenly finds themself washed up on a beach near a mansion where he is told he can't leave or die and that he needs to fight his way to the deeper part of the mansion to destroy the heart. You will fight through rooms where you will need to kill all enemies to proceed. To do that you pick up, shoot, reload, and throw guns at enemies, kick enemies and doors with doors near enemies being able to kill them, toggle on slow motion, and perform a dive move that can avoid bullets. The base mechanics are fine but I don't enjoy the enemies that take multiple hits to kill and your own large health bar. Mostly all your trying to avoid doing is destroy too many doors or glass windows that can lead to larger groups of enemies engaging you or sneaking up on you, as long as you don't break open a door or window enemies are unable to get through them.

Every three areas and in the first area of a new run is a bar where you can spend coins (first one of the run is free) that you get from killing enemies and maintaining a high combo for higher rewards on different types of alcohol that give you passive bonuses. The abilities you can gain from the bars might do something like allowing you to do more damage when stationary, reload faster, recharge your slow motion ability faster or they can give more targeted buffs to certain types of weapons or give you abilities that allow for unique playstyles like allowing you to block bullets, gain a kunai if you roll while holding no weapon, transform kunai into a throwing axe that you can summon back to you, etc. As the bars are limited to only three kinds of drinks unless you spend even more to restock you could easily thing that your likely to be stuck with completely useless or contradictory things for your runs most of the time but one of the only positives I can give the game is that if you get to a bar and choose to save and go back to the main menu and then reload it will change the drink menu, actually allowing you to pick up skills that might make the game more fun or interesting for you, if you don't mind rerolling drinks as many times as needed.

The available weapons can also be changed up by toggling what guns are available or not in your next run which also means it effects what weapons enemies will use. Trying to do an all pistol or sniper rifle run might be fun but you do have to keep in mind that doing so might make boss fights much more difficult. Once you get through six stages you will fight a boss before moving to another area with six stages and a boss, the new area might introduce a new enemy or give enemies a bonus like having extra armor. Every boss is a tedious bullet sponge with a small number of attacks that become easy to predict over time, while the main enemies aren't as much fun as they lack the more visceral nature of the kills of your opponents in something like Hotline Miami or even other slow motion using top down games like The Hong Kong Massacre, these bosses have no reaction to being shot at all and are some of the worst bosses I've seen in a genre like this.

Fighting the main enemies is ok but not as much fun as similar games I've played in this style. The bosses are terrible. I personally hate the music. A lot of the guns and abilities just aren't that fun to use. You can, in an inefficient way, tailor a run to work more in a way you find interesting which seems more like an unintentional feature or engine issue (like not being able to use the mouse on menus, not being able to save Steam screenshots, not being able to change the mouse sensitivity that are related to the game engine) as it certainly isn't something the game tells you. If you don't reload for abilities you end up with frequent terrible choices that can have either nothing to do with your playstyle or you might want to play in a certain way but it requires having multiple abilities together that can take too long to find otherwise. There also just isn't that much content and what there is it pretty much wants you to do all of in one run, by the time I was done I didn't even have anything practical left to buy as an upgrade and the logical endpoint of the run should have come around three sets of stages prior.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1739140204244652227
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2nNEv7kCco&t=335s&ab_channel=Legolas_Katarn