Played the demo for "Scars Above". I'm a fan.
It's a souls-lite, because there's a dodge-roll that uses up limited stamina (you also use up stamina waving your space-cleaver around, or by sprinting), and you save and respawn at monoliths, which also respawn all enemies. But that's where similarities end, because you don't lose any resources on death, you respawn with full ammo in all weapons, and some of the experience cubes also respawn between deaths, so you get a chance to farm xp and collect extra juicy skill points.
The game's combat relies on alternating between guns with different elemental ammo types (electrical, fire, cryo) and hitting enemy weakpoints. Enemy design is decisively Zerg-y for the most part, though they start showing more variety later on.
The story is sci-fi horror as you're part of a science team exploring a big alien monolith hanging in space above earth, and things go very wrong. There's a timeskip, you forget stuff, and to spend most of the demo chasing your fellow crew member who's got a very "captain Diego from System Shock 2" thing going on.
The really cool thing about the elemental weapons is that it takes a page out of BioShock-so electrocuting enemies in water kills them in a few hits, but if there's a light drizzle, it's easier to apply freezing effect, and THEN electrocute them. It's pretty neat, and there's also supposed to be poison, and a few other "weapon groups" so there's definitely potential here.
Basically, you explore alien complex, solve occasional puzzles and shoot Zerg and rock-apes. It's a pretty good time, and the loading screens and Steam page screenshots hint at loads more biomes than the swampy mountain area I got to play in the demo. So far, this looks to be the best thing Prime Matter decided to publish.
This post has been edited by Mentalist: 06 October 2022 - 05:42 AM