Boneraiser Minions is an appropriately priced vampire survivors type experience (if there is a genre name decided I would like to know!) that tries to mix things up by adding in some tower defense mechanics on the maps you survive on and making the character summon/level up minions when they "level up".

What did make things slightly frustrating for me was how easy it was to lose yourself in the chaos. This isn't a consistent problem, but it can pop up when certain enemies just happen to blend in easier with the map and items littered about.

This was a nice "play daily for a few sessions" style of game, but this didn't hook me enough to see everything through here.

Boneraiser's schtick is that you summon undead minions at intervals selecting from a randomised list of undead. Minions of different types can be fused together to make more powerful minions, and you have to balance between quality and quantity.

This sounds pretty straightforward but the game has real issues conveying information. The only way to see what undead you have is in an out of the way menu option and you can't be sure how your decision to fuse or add undead impacts the game. The evolution tree is only visible in the lobby so it's tough to remember which undead you're missing or how to create specific ones. Also the game insists on this old timey way of phrasing everything that makes everything take longer to read and it does it for every single piece of text in the game.

The classes largely play the same (bar one), and while there's lots of features to unlock the game expects you to tactically turn some features off to optimise your run, but who wants to turn off their power ups? The UX is also annoying as everything is laid out in grids rather than a clear list with the descriptions visible to compare and make decisions.

The customisation of the maps is a cool idea in principle but just ends up feeling like padding as do the mini games. Plus the dedication to the 8 bit art-style is at the expense of clarity, this game has a real issue with contrast that is necessary in a game where a pixel of overlap kills you in a second. You can customise some of the visuals but it makes little difference, especially when enemies spawn under you.

If the game was willing to put substance before style then I could probably dig into this more but as is, it feels messy and rough.

Fairly certain this is my favorite game to come out of the wave inspired by vampire survivors.

I've always been a big fan of minion based gameplay, and, as the name suggests, that's the focus here. You'd expect a game about minions to be fairly passive to play, but you're dodging for you life and trying to get off spell casts regularly here, so it ends up being among the more engaging games in the genre. There's also a great variety of classes, spells, minions, relics, maps, tower defense type structures to build on the maps, etc. to keep things fresh for a good long time as well.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the strange mix of faux olde English and juvenile humor strewn throughout every bit of text in the game. For me, it's so dumb that it wraps back around to having its own charm, but I could see some being turned off by it.

Sights & Sounds
- For whatever reason, the black background 8-bit aesthetic with the chosen color palette really hits right for me. Somehow, each of the little minions looks distinct despite being so small. Just lots of impressive pixel art work everywhere in the game
- The soundtrack is also excellent. I like the jukebox feature in the hubworld that lets you choose your music
- The sound effects are great, and I enjoyed the little touches like the slap you hear whenever you dismiss a beggar or a merchant who isn't selling anything you want

Story & Vibes
- There's not much by way of story. You're an evil boneraiser who only wishes to raise bones and give King Gigald a good pounding
- The game is called Boneraiser Minions ffs. Of course the game is filled to the brim with penis jokes. If you find that kind of humor funny, you've come to the right place

Playability & Replayability
- The slick pixel art and enjoyable humor could carry the game a long way by themselves, but Boneraiser Minions is also a notably feature-rich "bullet heaven" with a surprising amount of build variety
- Your first runs will be pretty basic as you unlock items, minion evolutions, characters, levels, and game modes. The basic gameplay loop you'll experience is basically Vampire Survivors, but rather than dealing damage to enemies directly, you necromance yourself up a shambling army of the dead to do your dirty work for you. You power up your minions and raise new ones as you level up, helping you better fend off the waves of enemies filling the screen
- Unlike Vampire Survivors, however, there's always a boss fight to cap off each run. You fight King Gigald and, if you beat him, you can go back to your castle with your winnings or loop back to the beginning of the run with all of your minions in tow
- There's also survival challenges, a level-based adventure mode where you fight Queen Gigald, daily challenges, and a little card game reminiscent of Triple Triad (a la Final Fantasy VIII)

Overall Impressions & Performance
- I really enjoy how focused and "tight" of an experience this game was. Compared to Vampire Survivors, Boneraiser Minions may feel smaller owing to fewer characters and unlockables. But I actually appreciated that. I feel like I got to see most of what the game offers without having to jump through a bunch of convoluted hoops
- This is an excellent Steam Deck game. On top each run only lasting 30 minutes, I've played only a handful of games that were as gentle to the battery. You could probably play all day and finish with 40% charge

Final Verdict
- 8.5/10. Definitely worth a shot if you enjoy this specific subgenre. I actually enjoyed it a little more than Vampire Survivors. The visuals and addition of items just give each run a little more variety

stands above a lot of its trend hopping peers by virtue of its very cute and charming halloween world, and also because it requires a degree of active focus that leaves games like 20 minutes til dawn, brotato, halls of torment etc. feeling a touch lacking. i think most of these recent vampire-survivor-likes have already figured out that giving the player control of the attacking makes for more decision making makes for more engagement in simple roguelikes like this, but boneraiser flips it a little - your firepower doesn't even emanate from yourself, you're just a very fragile target floating around while your minions do all the work. as such you take a lot of damage, even minor grazes from enemies can nearly halve your health and larger waves can create a lot of instant game over scenarios.

this difficulty curve was initially a bit frustrating but i ended up putting like 30 hours into the game, which is way more than i can say for most of those aforementioned peers so clearly its good at making me invested. boneraiser minions is the first caiysware game i've actually sat down and played, but i've been familiar with the guys style for awhile and i really appreciate his taste in little pixel art ghouls & ghosts and in garish neon color palettes. at this point i'm pretty sick of the 8-16 bit era throwback style when its used solely as a callback (shovel knight and its consequences on the human race) but caiysware has a good spin on it. much recommended