Between Cuphead, Enter the Gungeon, and Vampire Survivors, in recent years the bullet hell genre has heralded some of the most-loved games on PC. Frenetic, fast, and punishing, bullet hells (and heavens) share a lot of common ground with the traditional roguelike – if you like solving puzzles while trying to avoid getting shot to bits, you’re probably also a fan of Dead Cells, Cult of the Lamb, and the other roguelike staples. You take all these influences, add the development pedigree of beloved Steam cult hit Helltaker, and drop the price to an irresistible zero dollars, and you get Awaria, which has already earned near-perfect reviews and is available right now.
Created by Łukasz Piskorz, better known by the developer handle vanripper, Awaria is a bullet hell, free Steam game and semi roguelike with a unique premise. As the head of engineering and maintenance at a derelict sci-fi prison, your job is to keep the shield generators, ventilation systems, and other vital machines online and humming along. You enter a level, and there’s a broken appliance. You also see two other, smaller machines that dispense components. It seems simple. Collect the components, carry them to the busted hunk of metal, plug them in, and hey presto, job done. But there’s a complication – several, in fact.
First of all, the component dispensers need time to print out the parts. As you progress through Awaria, the fixes also become more complex, with more broken machines requiring more replacement bits that also take longer to manufacture. Secondly, the entire place is haunted by angry ghost girls who variously want to smash you with a pipe wrench, cut you up with pliers, or generally screw up your shift.
You can’t fight back – as you run and fetch between the different machines, your only real option is to dodge around the furious phantoms and rely on your support droid to bring you back to life, if the worst happens. Respawns are limited however and the levels can get mighty claustrophobic. Like the best bullet hells, you need to become a lightning fast flamenco dancer and learn the ghosts’ attack patterns.
Finish the repairs without getting smoked, though, and you might find that the specters are susceptible to a cuddle and a box of cupcakes – like in Helltakers, where your ultimate goal was to romance the fieriest demon girls in the whole afterlife, in Awaria, there’s the chance for romance.
Released on Monday December 16, after 2,400 user reviews, Awaria has already accumulated a seriously impressive 96% positive score on Steam. Helltaler is equally lauded – a 97% score after some 122,000 reviews – so you can bet that vanripper has the goods. If that’s not enough to coax you, Awaria is also a completely free PC game. If you want to get it, just head here.
Otherwise, you might want to try some of the best indie games, or maybe the best new PC games available right now.
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