Flick Shot Rogues is the definition of a indie hidden gem. Really surprised this flew under my radar for so long and, judging by the amount of Steam reviews, so many other people that I’m sure would really enjoy it if they gave it a shot.

Straight from the start, you can tell that there’s a lot of talent behind this team, especially with it being their first official release. The art style is great, the music is awesome, the menus and UI are all really well designed, and there’s just an overall level of polish on display here that you just don’t really see out of a lot of other indie games on Steam.

The core combat system here seemed pretty fun and simple at first, but the variety of enemy and boss move sets that get introduced in each new area really makes this a more complex game than it might seem like on the surface. Encounters get harder and harder as you progress through runs, as they should, but there’s a really great passive leveling system bridled with plenty of opportunities to pick up upgrades, shop for items, and run into vendors that will provide you with massive buffs that keeps your characters on par with the difficult challenges you’ll face off against.

The tag team system here is a really genius way of keeping runs fresh and exciting. It works very similarly to Monster Train, if you’re familiar with that, where you’ll choose two characters at the start of run that have their own unique playstyles, but on top of that you’ll also choose a relic to equip to each character that all add drastic modifiers to their moves. This mix and match system is a ton of fun to mess around with and I was constantly surprising myself with how well certain duos worked together or how broken some character and artifact match ups ended up playing out in runs.

I did find that once I got up to Doom 4, the difficulty spiked pretty considerably. It does really start to feel like luck starts to play way more into whether a run is going to make it to the end or not, especially in the later areas where a single bad bounce or miss click can lead to you getting absolutely annihilated either by the enemies, stage hazards, or combination of both. You also get the last playable character, the cannoneer, around this point which I thought introduced even more problems. They just feel way too punishing to use. It’s really difficult to line up any shot to avoid taking damage from your own rockets after hitting an enemy, and this constant chipping away at your shield/health really adds up over time. The fact that you hit yourself with every rocket you’ve loaded up in a turn if you don’t have any enemies in your range just kind of feels mean and can really damage a run if you end up getting hit at a really inopportune time. I think the devs need to either consider modding their kit to do far less friendly fire or introduce upgrades that drastically buff your character every time that you hit yourself to make the trade off more worth it.

After hunkering down with my stongest duo and build on top of save scumming some encounters by exiting out of them before the Game Over screen so I could try them again, I managed to clear Doom 5 and essentially clear the game. While it was kind of a bummer that I had to resort to some cheap tricks to see this to the end, I will say that my final run was a really fun one where I basically just melted everyone in my path so it made for a satisfying victory lap. With more account levels to grind through, unlockables to collect, and achivements to strive for, this will definitely be one that I return to over and over again on my Steam Deck whenever I get a hankering to do so.

If you’re a fan of roguelike builders, I highly recommend this one. Even with the obstacles revolving around Doom difficulty, this is definitely one worth checking out to, at the very least, make sure this dev can continue supporting this awesome game and work on even more worth while projects in the future.

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8: Great