Even when making indie games that you could assume are inherently simpler on average, finding a balance between simplicity and consistent engagement is a challenge. Sure, there have been and will continue to be brilliant game concepts that are simple on their face but tremendously deep, but other times reducing complexity too much, can make the interest level flatline pretty quickly. Genome Guardian, in my mind, falls into that trap of trying to make a generally simple idea work well by throwing some roguelike variety into the mix, but in the end it just doesn’t amount to much in terms of excitement.

The challenge in reviewing the game is that while there’s certainly some complexity, especially as you begin combining different weapon types to make new hybrids, the variety they offer can only do so much. Granted, this is a turret shooter, so a piece of the puzzle is that you’re going to simply try to keep yourself rotating to take out anything coming at you, but more often than not regardless of the weapons and configurations I chose, the play was just too similar. I could survive longer, take on different enemy types, or see different visual flourishes depending on my weapons and gear, but it all pretty quickly began to feel familiar and quite dull.

Sure, once you begin to introduce elements like mutations, the choices you’ll make with meta progression, and more, some specifics for play will change, but the fundamentals really don’t. So much of what you’ll be doing is playing with your buffs or those of your enemies, but that doesn’t really alter the experience in any significant way. I’ll give credit to the developer for choosing a style of play that I can’t say I’ve encountered on the Switch eShop to this point, but given the limits of the fun to be had here that isn’t terribly surprising.