“Battle relentless alien swarms, complete dynamic missions, gather valuable resources, and forge devastating builds in this fast-paced space survivor.” – Steam Description

Eon Survivor is a survivors-like set in space where your character is the ship that you select. This loop is slightly different from Vampire Survivors in that there are objectives that you have to move to almost constantly. You travel from asteroid to asteroid mining them for resources for you to turn into your transport ship. If you don’t get 100% of your quota you are left behind and the run fails. Therefore it’s very important that you are mindful of your time and mining speed. In a way this is more similar to Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, but that might just be because you’re mining and… maybe I’ve been playing to many dwarf games lately.

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Into the Cockpit

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There are eight total ships for you to select. You only start with a single ship at the beginning, and you need to buy the new ships with currency. They aren’t just skins though. Each ship has a different starting weapon, different armor and health, and different perk path. One ship has chain lightning unlocks, another ship has a drone that will assist you in combat, and another ship has a medical drone that heals you. Those are just a couple of the many ships, but I encourage you to try them all out because the playstyles are pretty different.

Each ship starts with a different starting weapon but once you’ve unlocked the corresponding ship you’ll begin to see that weapon on any run no matter the ship you’re using. Before you start a run you have the option to select up to three weapons some of which might have been a previous reward. So there’s always that chance at the super OP build you love so much.

After your run ends, you will see a mission complete screen. It’ll have all the relevant information about your run like how long your run was or how many enemy pilots you managed to capture. What my early version of the game doesn’t explain is that there is a global ranking for your stats on each mission. Obviously it’s on this end screen but if you know me, you know that I need to see where I am in relation. Sure I might be 3rd in kill count for that mission but by how much. I’m confident there will be a leaderboard to reference at the release version but if not, I’m still glad there is a ranking.

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Among the Stars

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If you’ve play a game in this genre, you know what I’m about to say. You kill enemies, enemies drop experience, you gather that experience to level, and you unlock ways to kill those enemies better. While all of that is pretty standard, this game has rarity levels from Common to Legendary granting stronger buffs. A “Common” health increase might give 25% more HP but a “Legendary” health might give 150% more HP. At levels 5, 10, and 15 you get to select another weapon from your pool of unlocked weapons. After you unlock a weapon you can start to see rewards for that weapon specifically, ranging from damage percent increases to even increased number of projectiles.

Each run is structured the same, you have 3 minutes to mine asteroids in set areas and then return to your mother ship. The amount of minerals that you have is listed in the top right corner as a percentage. Once you hit 100% you cannot mine anymore and you must return, you are rewarded with cash for the minerals deposited and the amount you can hold can be increased. After you deposit your full cargo, you are given some choices that are specific to your economy. This could be things like increasing how many minerals you can hold, making it so prisoners you capture are worth more money, or that enemies even give you minerals or cash when you defeat them. You will complete this loop five times in every run making the base run time 15 minutes. This is barring any time limit increases and ignoring if you bee line it for mining and not taking the full 3 minutes per load. Side missions can spawn that give you a bounty of cash and increase your time limit by one full minute so you usually make back the time you spend doing them or even come out net positive.

On the fifth loop per run you cannot return to the ship! Instead a boss ship approaches and you have to stay within a certain range or the mission counts as a failure and ends. Each boss has some unique mechanics to them but you would have seen hints as to what to expect as you play through that run.

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Follow the Meta

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What’s a rogue-like or survivors type game without a little bit of meta progression. This game has levels for the ships all the way up to level 20, and the ship levels increase damage and maximum health by 5%. As you level your ship you can purchase perks for that ship. You can select three perks that you have purchased to be active anytime before you start a run.

Outside of ship specific meta progression, there is also general meta progression. Eon Survivor even handles this a bit differently with giving breakpoints throughout the upgrades. As you can see they are split by color rarity. For example, structure gives you maximum health point increase for “Common”, but once you get to “Uncommon” level you will also get a small amount of health regeneration per second. Harvest gives you mining speed but at higher rarity also gives you more mineral yield per mining tick. I think that it’s a much better structure and feels better than increasing my critical chance by 1%, 2%, 3%, and so forth.

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• Graphics– Graphics are good, they are what I’d expect from a space game. My only minor complaint is that sometimes when you destroy a ship their pilot ejects. If you capture the pilot you are rewarded with cash. However, the pilots are small and hard to see especially when I had the turret weapons and missiles flying everywhere. I think an outline or a different color would go a long way.
• Gameplay– The gameplay loop is extremely satisfying with a lot of agency to influence each playstyle. The maps you battle on in a run are varied and have their own environmental twists. These can include poisonous clouds, meteors that must be avoided, EMP generators around the asteroids or mining in complete darkness using just your flashlight. Even though you’re defeating waves of enemies in each level it does a very good job of feeling different.
• Sound– Sound design works well. The soundtrack is custom and even lists the song title and artist in the corner. You can switch songs with a hotkey mid run. However, none of the tracks felt like anything special, but they were just good ambient music.
• Controls– Controls felt as you’d expect, WASD to move. The boost that you can do with shift felt punchy and enjoyable to press.
• Story– Nonexistent, as you’d expect for a survivors-like. I don’t think anyone comes to a game like this for a gripping narrative.