Another week, and we have another small group of indie titles who were obviously inspired by the success and solid gameplay of Vampire Survivors, looking for their own shot at financial and critical achievement. There’s no question, right out of the gate, that visually Royal Revolt Survivors looks more like a contemporary title, at least to a degree. That said, the more time you look to invest in it, the more some of its flaws and shortcomings come to light, even if it has some decent ideas running under the hood.

First, in place of the less-polished pixel art featured in the originator of this new style of play, Royal Revolt Survivors features colorful rendered characters and environments, even if they’re hardly groundbreaking either. Second, its selection of different classes do have some character overall, even if in terms of their setup and abilities they’re a bit generic. Third, in terms of the metagame there’s plenty to unlock, at least for a while, helping to keep you coming back to check out what’s new.

All that said, there are definitely some problems and those start with the somewhat uneven nature of play in terms of difficulty. Quite a number of times it would feel like I was effortlessly coasting through the bulk of the minutes of my run, only to have things scale up disproportionately in the final minute or two. To a degree this isn’t uncommon for this sort of title, with the final rush moving enemies into a new gear, but to get that far coasting to that point it feels like the game was simply wasting my time, boring me for the bulk of the run and then punishing me with an onslaught and failure at the end. Another issue is that in terms of what you’ll be doing as a whole, there just doesn’t seem to be any standout feature that helps this clearly stand on its own, apart from the rest of the pack. Perhaps the hope was that the game features multiplayer support, whether locally or online, but sadly that plays out more as a slapped-on addition that can make runs easier, instead of feeling like it gives the experience more depth. Though there are elements here that work, on the whole in this crowded space the lack of new ideas or more impressive visual flourishes keep this from more effectively making its mark.