Collapsed

Collapsed was reviewed on a PS4

Love em or Hate em, rogue-lite games are pretty popular nowadays. I spent an unholy amount of hours replaying The Binding of Isaac back when it first came out. There’s no denying the amount of satisfaction you get from replaying the game countless of times, while pushing through and slowly crawling your way towards an ending that’s always in sight but is always so far.

Collapsed is one such game. During my early runs, I was barely able to reach the boss fights, but after sticking with it, understanding all of its mechanics, and simply getting better at it, I was able to push through to the credits, more than once.

What is Collapsed?

Collapsed is a procedurally generated rogue-lite 2D Sidescroller set against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic world. When first starting the game, you have the option of choosing one of four different playable character classes. Each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and their own animations.

You can’t change characters mid-game though; you’re stuck with playing as the same character for the entirety of your playthrough. Changing the playable character requires you to start a new game, but the skills you upgraded your first character with, carry over to any new playthroughs.

Each run consists of going through the same generic looking and repetitive arenas, a city in ruins, an industrial factory and a green jungle to name a few. These arenas lack any engaging platforming despite your character being able to wall jump, dash and crouch. This can serve as a pro and a con for the game at the same time.

It’s nice to be able to just boot Collapsed up, kick a few enemies butts and get your own butt handed to you. Your pacing won’t ever be interrupted by puzzle solving or any tough decisions to make with the exception of managing the loot you pick up.  However, this can make most of your runs feel like a mindless slog.

Procedurally Generated Playthroughs

Progressing in the game requires finding a bunch of portals, which when activated; either spawn a number of enemies near you, or opens up the way to the next level. Defeating all of the enemies will make the portal drop a number of goodies; health pickups, flask recharges and items to equip.

The items that you equip offer quite a hefty number of abilities to take advantage of, though the inventory is overly cluttered and it’s easy to get frustrated with it. During my first hours, I ignored the powerups completely as it was too much of a hassle to sift through their overly similar abilities.

I realized later on that constantly upgrading and changing your equipped abilities is necessary for your survival during the harder playthroughs. I would have preferred it if the game automatically sorts out the items that can be equipped on your ranged weapon, armor and melee weapon. Instead, it lumps them up all together in the inventory and you’ll have to sift through them one by one, reading all of their stats, until you find something that suits your playstyle.

Things Can Get A Bit Messy

The flurry of animations and particle effects can make Collapsed a bit of a chore to play at times. Most enemies will shoot projectiles at you, and the screen can get extremely messy at times, especially when fighting a larger number of enemies. Trying to juggle dodging their shots while doing your own shooting and slashing can get overwhelming.

Combat can also get a bit boring after a while due to the lack of animations. Hitting your enemies, be it with your ranged or your melee weapon, lacks any impactful animations or reactions. The same goes for your playable character. You won’t notice that you’re about to lose all of your health until you glimpse at the health bar below. There isn’t any indicators that let you know when you’re about to die.

The world of Collapsed is shrouded in mystery. There is a bit of lore to explore, but they’re too disorganized and there’s no way to review them in-game. Notes are scattered along the levels but they’re in a random order and the game doesn’t sort them out for you. You’ll end up reading the same confusing, out of context note a dozen of times without really understanding the sequence of events it’s meant to convey.

Skills! Skills! Skills!

The skill tree is massive. It’s filled with all of these abilities that are unlockable. But oh wait; they’re all passive skills that add random percentages on your stats. Percentages that would be barely noticeable during your playthroughs.

There are a few abilities to unlock, like an ability that damages nearby enemies when you fall from a great height. However, these abilities are tied to pickups that you’ll have to find and equip during your runs.

The greatest sin that Collapsed commits is that you need to equip the skills, and you’re limited to activating just a few of them at a time. This makes the skill tree extremely grindy and requires many hours to be put in to get the upgrade you want, only to sacrifice it later on for a more useful skill.

The skill tree is global though and is shared across all of your characters. However, since your new game’s character is low-leveled, you’re still going to have as much of a difficulty as you did the first time.

Overall,

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with Collapsed, I still wouldn’t go around recommending it to people. Its gameplay mechanics are solid, the shooting and the slashing are fun as well. However, it’s an average game at best.

The procedurally generated levels are bland and repetitive. The boss fights aren’t innovative nor original. To top it off, the game’s grindy elements means that it’ll get more irritating the more you play it. It’s definitely fun to play in short bursts occasionally, but there’s nothing in it that compels you to keep coming back for more.

Many of the game’s user reviews on steam compared it to the old flash games that we all grew up on and I can’t help but agree with that notion. The graphics are very similar in vein to those games and the lack of impactful animations further cement that notion.

I can’t say that I was a fan of the grindy skill tree and the messy UI of the cluttered inventory as well. If you’re REALLY itching for a rogue-lite game to play, then Collapsed is not the worst choice you can make, but you can do definitely do better. It’s true that it’s fun for a while, but it doesn’t really try to do anything special or interesting with its formula.

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Special thanks go to OverGamez for providing us with a review code.

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You should play Collapsed if you

• Enjoy rogue-lite games
• Don’t mind the lack of interesting platforming
• Enjoy the increasing difficulty
• Don’t mind the generic stages
• Enjoy managing loot and upgrading your characters
• Don’t mind the simplistic graphics.

Collapsed’s Score

6/10