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• 20 Jul, 2026 NTE 2 Months Later

  It's been just over two months since I wrote my initial review of NTE, and considering NTE is a live service game, I think it's healthy to have follow up reviews of content as long as I keep playing. If NTE continues on it's current path, I think I'll have plenty more updates to share. There are a lot of things to talk about, and I'm excited to talk about the good and bad of all the major content that has been released over the last two months.

  Limited-Time Events

  As NTE is a live service game, it's really important for them to give the players new content. Aside from the main story and sidequests, one way Hotta goes about giving players reasons to play are their limited time events. Not counting login-based events, we've had 6 limited-time events so far of varying degrees of quality.

  For Patch 1.1, we had the Underground Circuit and What's Baking limited-time events. Underground Circuit was a Mario Kart-esque PvP racing minigame, and What's Baking was focused on the in-universe social media app "Bagel".

  Underground Circuit was really mediocre to me. Cars had very high durability against weapons, which really made the utility weapons the best options for general use. The ice gun had a high rate of fire which allowed it to destroy objects in the way or hinder other racers' vision. The spike strip shotgun was probably the best weapon when you were in first place, as it really helped to slow down other racers. There were a few problems to the event: the Le Mans style start as well as randomized cars. The Le Mans style start really rewards players who have movement skills like Jiuyuan's redirect, or Daffodil's dash cancel. It could be argued that optimizing your movement is skill expression, but if a player doesn't have Jiuyuan or Daffodil, it made getting a good car at the start much more difficult. With random car spawns in set areas around the map, using these movement skills to get to them faster was also quite important. That said, many players were AFK farming the event after the first few days (I'd guess mobile players or console, since both have notable disadvantages when compared to PC player potentials) so the fun wore off quickly. There were definitely some fun quirks like the surprise co-op races where someone would get in the passenger seat of your car.

  What's Baking was focused around the in-universe social media app which is basically Facebook. Images with titles and captions could be posted, and the more interaction you got, the more event currency you received. It should be noted that Bagel is still active in-game at time of writing, as the Bagel shop is open however the limited-time rewards are gone. This event was also okay. It was really dragged down by a bug where you wouldn't be able to post. I think the event rewards were easy enough to get as long as you posted 5 screenshots on Bagel daily. However I think the core issue of Bagel is discoverability. There's an insane amount of Like For Like (L4L) and Follow for Follow (F4F) farming; people will spam comments on their own posts to boost "interaction" which causes Bagel to move the posts higher in the Recommended feed. While I think it's cool to have in-game, as the story dialogue and a loading screen tip mention it a few times, it's something that I don't really care about. I'd say this is the weakest limited-time event put out thus far.

  For patch 1.1.12, we got access to the Fight Championship and Hunter's Crucible events. Fight Championship was a PvP game mode, and Hunter's Crucible was a boss challenge game mode. Of the two, I really enjoyed Hunter's Crucible.

  Fight Championship was a decent event however it suffered from some text problems and a lack of explanation in some areas. The core idea was simple enough; fight barehanded in the gulag against 3 other players. However much like the Underground Circuit event, this one was heavily AFK farmed as well as far as I could tell. I think the gameplay loop was entertaining but ping differences and lag caused a lot of problems for me. I'd see players teleporting around or I'd get hit when nobody was near me on my end. I think this issue might stem from NTE's netcode, as I also see rubberbanding and sync issues when playing with my friends in MY and PH. For full transparency, I'm located in Japan and I play on SEA servers. I have a ping of around 40-60 ms. I've played Battlefield on 120 ms ping and had fewer sync issues. Now the other major issue of the Fight Championship event was tied to the PvE portion of it. You were required to unlock the Tornado fight in the prison and based on the event UI, many people, myself included, thought it would unlock the PvE challenges closer to the end of the event. But on the last couple days of the event, the PvE challenge button never unlocked. After some quick Googling, I saw that you'd have to do all the PvE challenges in prison and that the PvE button in the event UI didn't actually do anything. After doing the PvE challenges in prison, I got the rewards from the event. It was poorly laid out to the players, but this won't be the last time we encounter the issue of bad explanations and bugs.

  Hunter's Crucible was a great event that really pushed the PvE content. It gave players access to a variety of bosses with a bunch of modifiers. The more detrimental the modifiers, the more points players would earn on a clear. Of course, these points were required to get everything out of the event shop. I'd say this is probably the hardest content I've seen in the game so far, since I wanted to max out my points. Damage resistance, increased enemy HP and damage, and a time limit made it much more fun because it was mildly challenging. Especially for my team since I didn't invest or use any primary DPS characters (Chaos, Nanally, or Baicang. My Lacrimosa wasn't even close to built at the time). It was a fun challenge! Arguably anyone that used a mostly built primary DPSer wouldn't have had much of a problem.

  At time of writing, we're on Patch 1.2 and we've had 3 events with more to come if the livestream is accurate and nothing goes wrong. We have 999 Nights, Shadow-n-Seek, and Mews Flash. One of these events is okay and the other is actually awful. Mews Flash is scratch cards, and 999 Nights is a whole new game mode. I don't really need to go too much into Mews Flash since they're just scratch cards that are likely to put a big dent in your wallet. But 999 Nights is pretty big, and Shadow-n-Seek is prop hunt.

  999 Nights takes you, Mint, Shinku, and Iroi into a high fantasy boardgame world. Shinku is the latest new gacha character at time of writing, with Iroi to follow once Shinku's banner is over. The combat is more or less the same as the base game, however it introduces a Diablo-esque loot treadmill. You are locked to the 4 characters presented and you start with nothing. No money, no gear... nothing. This is completely cut off from the base game. There are unique quests, unique gear, and now gear sets. Gear in 999 Nights can give bonuses much the same as your cartridge and modules in the base game. You can get crit rate, crit damage, HP, and so on. It is a bit simplified in terms of raw stats, but is changed significantly by sets, uniques, and passives. These sets will dictate how you approach the challenge and nightmare modes, which are unlocked after beating the previous difficulty level. As of time of writing, after you buy out the shop, this event is basically skippable unless you really enjoy the gameplay. However aside from the meta currency used for the event shop, I don't know if there's any point in playing aside from trying to farm the meta currency for when the second part of the shop opens. There is an item in the shop that refreshes daily but I haven't used any of the Heterogenous Units yet so I don't see much of a point in farming too heavily. I'm not a huge fan of high fantasy and I started playing NTE specifically because it isn't fantasy. Aesthetically, I couldn't wait to be done with the event however the gameplay is arguably better than the base game due to all the extra items you have access to, which can allow you to make some really broken builds. The most difficult bosses can be cleared in well under 30 seconds if you invest the time. The game mode does have a few bugs and there are times where the text in the achievements doesn't match other parts of the game. In addition, the lack of checklists make certain aspects harder to figure out such as which minigames you need to do to complete certain achievements.

  Shadow-n-Seek is a pretty simple prop hunt. There are 5 hiders and 1 seeker. The hiders get to rotate between 3 different props that seem to work in sets. Some are hard to work with, while others are pretty ridiculously overpowered. Of course, the props available change depending on the map. Seekers get a radar ability that tells them if any hider is within the AoE of the radar. Hiders are allowed to spawn a few decoys that will trigger the radar and taunt. Hiders can also move during the round however their movespeed is greatly increased during the prep time. Overall, I think it's simplistic but really fun. I haven't seen any issues with people trying to AFK, though this may be due partially to the fact that this style of prop hunt allows hiders to go AFK.

  Quality of Life (QoL) Limited-Time Events

  While not proper events in their own right, we've had a few QoL limited-time events. These are events that allow you to finish your weekly city stamina more quickly for increased rewards, increase the fons you get per Pink Paws Bank Heist, or give increased drops in certain character pixel dungeons. While not worth writing home about, they are definitely worth a shout out because when they're on, it's nice to be able to do stuff more efficiently.

  Monetization

  There have been two mystery boxes and my god I really hope they don't make these a regular thing because if they do, I may quit and I really don't wanna quit.

  The first mystery box was the Everdriving Mystery Box, which as far as I can tell is an official Porsche collab. While most of rewards in the mystery box were good, the costs were far too high if you wanted to get everything. It's very unfriendly for F2P or light spenders. There were a lot of great items like the Porsche 918 Spyder which is objectively the best car in the game at the moment. While customization of the 918 is prohibitively expensive and the oversteer does leave a bit to be desired, the acceleration and top speed are second to none. If you were able to buy it out, you could get some very useful items! Again, I think the prohibitive costs were what held this box back from being good.

  The second mystery box is the Neon Rift Mystery Box and is still good but has problems of bloat to nickel and dime the players. On the one hand, I think the Draco motorcycle is the best way to travel around the city. Like other motorcycles, it can be summoned almost anywhere however it can make incredibly sharp turns, has instant acceleration, and can jump. It also has infinite durability at the moment. The big issue with this mystery box is the inclusion of reskins of the main character skin. The reskins take up 2 out of 15 boxes and are objectively the worst items in the box since they do literally nothing without the character skin. Everything else is usable regardless of whatever you get from the box. The total cost however is notably lower than the Everdriving mystery box.

  Overall, while none of the items in any of the boxes are truly necessary, the Draco is a big QoL and the Porsche 918 is the fastest car in the game. I would advise checking the pull charts on websites like Game8 to figure out how much you're willing to spend, because you are unlikely to get the best items in the mystery boxes until the last pulls.

  Story

  Circling back to the overall story and plot of the game, we've had one main story episode since 1.0 and that was the Dreamwalk Corridor which also unlocked the Sunward Island location. Dreamwalk Corridor had lots of good moments and focused on Nanally; if you've read my previous review of NTE, you may recall that I didn't care for Nanally. I still don't, but Dreamwalk Corridor did a good bit of work to try and make me like her more. It also gives a bit of info about Daffodil's "family" which is an interesting dynamic. The writing is much better than I expected, but I also know that NTE's writing team can do a good job. I'm really hoping they continue the trend of having more serious moments getting time to breathe.

  999 Nights is also technically story content because it gives you more insight into Iroi as well as Shinku's backstory. That said, Shinku's backstory is poorly set up. She acts like a lone wolf because she's afraid of getting close to other people. Consequently because of her lone wolf act, she doesn't get enough screentime or development for the players to actually care about her. The reveal of her backstory lacks any impact or weight. It's difficult to empathize with her since you just don't know who she is. Overall, I'd say 999 Nights' backstory for Shinku is much worse than Dreamwalk Corridor's backstory for Nanally.

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• 13 Jun, 2026 Trials Survivors Demo Review

  I've put a good hour into the Trials Survivors demo and I'm on the fence. The demo does not give a great representation of what the game could be, since it doesn't provide any access to meta progression. They have a great spell customization system, but I don't feel compelled to spend more time with it. I'll keep this review on the shorter side.

  Trials Survivors is a Survivors-like game running in stages on a 3 minute timer. During each stage, you are given an overall objective to complete which generally isn't too difficult to achieve. Regardless of how long it takes to complete an objective, the 3 minute timer is a hard ceiling. After the timer expires, all enemies are wiped and all the XP on the map is automatically collected. Assuming you've achieved the stage objective, you get a chest which rewards you with more XP.

  There's one interesting objective which is to destroy towers around the stage. The other objectives are killing elites, escorting an orb, and not dying. There may be more in the full game, but in the demo we only see those 4 objectives, meaning there'll be at least one repeated objective per run. The escort mission is mildly annoying since it works basically the same as the survive objective, but you need to stand near a floating, moving relic. The relic is never in danger so you just follow it as it plods along randomly; it doesn't feel so much like an escort quest, but a moving King of the Hill objective. As such, I've named the relic "Hank."

  In the demo there are 3 "constellations," which is the in-game term for elemental abilities. However, in the current stage of early access, there are 7. The 3 in the demo are pretty typical: fire, ice, and lightning. Fire attacks have a chance to ignite enemies which does damage over time, ice damage can slow enemies, and lightning can proc shock which lowers their resistances. There are also 3 spells for each constellation and they aren't particularly original if you've played other Survivors-like games or even Diablo. That being said, one of the things I really liked was the ability to customize your spells rather than having a set progression path.

  Spells can be buffed through leveling, each spell has a set number of times it can be buffed, and the buff's efficacy is determined by RNG and shows the min and max possible rolls. When a spell reaches max level, you get to pick an evolution for the spell and it gets new upgrade slots. As an example, fireball can become chain fireball. It's literally chain lightning with fireballs and it's as powerful as it sounds. I felt pressured to funnel upgrades into my starter spell or whatever spell I unlocked within the first few levels. The game throws enough mobs at you that evolving an ability early feels like a necessity rather than a fun choice. I spent my early-game rerolls trying to make sure I'd get spell-specific upgrades rather than new spells or global modifiers. Also with my history in MMORPGs, I feel like the colors used for rarities are a bit misleading: common upgrades are gray, uncommons are blue, rares are yellow/gold, and the highest rarity is orange.

  There are two starting classes in the demo: a fire wizard and a lightning wizard. They buff their respective elemental damage types as well as getting a couple other thematic perks. Currently the early access version has 5 different classes, so with 7 constellations, I'd bet that classes and constellations will continue to go hand in hand. In addition, each class is given a thematic movement skill. The fire wizard's dash leaves a trail of lava and provides iframes, whereas the lightning wizard gets a significantly stronger movement option: a blink that damages on landing and allows you to bypass walls.

  Map design feels a bit on the milquetoast side. In the demo there is one biome, and I don't love it. As of time of writing, the early access states that there are 2 biomes. Additionally the first biome's maps are not what I'd call big. I'll admit that it's more visually interesting than Brotato, but I wouldn't call that a particularly high bar. What's more is that the maps have doodads and walls spread across them and getting to the doodads to break them and try to get the goodies within proves to be an irritating challenge without the lightning wizard's blink or an evolved ability.

  They've also stated on their Steam page that the game is going to just be an absolute mess visually. They love mob density and you can have tons of projectiles per cast of a skill. Combine those 2 things with the XP laying around on the ground, and you're going to have difficulty seeing anything. I don't think this is an intrinsically bad thing, but for me, it leans towards being a negative.

  My final real complaint about the game is that enemies don't seem to have a cooldown between their attacks or a knockback, so you can very quickly go from full health to dead. I think it would be better if there was some sort of more noticeable delay between attacks. The game has lots of healing throughout the map, but it's rendered null by how quickly you can die to one bat mob.

  My beef with the game is that the systems at play here aren't really strong enough to carry the game by themselves. The objective system is shallower than a kiddie pool. The round-based system isn't new or different. The only selling point for me is the spell evolution system, and that wasn't strong enough to make me want to try every evolution in the demo, and certainly isn't enough to make me want to buy the full game.

  While I really like the ability evolution mechanic, there's not much else that does it for me. They do have a meta-progression system (relics) outlined on the game's early access page, but unfortunately it's not available in the demo so I have zero way to determine what that's like short of buying the game, which I'm just not sold on at the current price point. That said, there is a meta-leveling system that provides small bonuses. If it's as advertised, it might just be an infinitely-scaling version of other meta-progression systems we've already seen. That makes it somewhat unique but I suspect it would require a significant time investment from players. Based on what the demo has to offer, I'm just not convinced there's enough to justify that investment.

  The game entered early access a few days ago and you can check it out on Steam. It's 20% off until June 23rd and the demo is still available. I highly encourage you to check out the demo for the spell customization and evolution system, but based on what I've played, I wouldn't buy the full game.

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• 31 May, 2026 Warhammer Survivors Demo Review

  Warhammer Survivors is a new Survivors-like game from Auroch Digital, the creators of Warhammer 40k Boltgun. I enjoy Survivors-like games quite a bit, and have around 100 hours across the genre. While that isn't a huge amount of time, it's enough to be able to separate great from mediocre. In addition, I'm a casual fan of 40k. I don't play the tabletop but I like the lore. And the memes. I love me some good Grimdank memes. I'm not much for Warhammer Fantasy or AoS, but I do play the Total War series, and I listen to lore often enough.

  When I saw that there was a 40k Survivors-like game, I was cautiously optimistic and I was right not to set my expectations too high. The game does have some cool aspects, but I think this is only really worth a purchase if you're a fan of 40k or AoS and haven't really exhausted most of Vampire Survivors. However it should be kept in mind that at time of writing, only the demo is available. After spending 2.7 hours on the Warhammer Survivors demo, I don't think it adds anything new to the genre, nor does it meaningfully improve anything pre-existing.

  Sound

  The sound effects are not bad but not great. Due to the repetitive nature of the gameplay of a Survivors-like game, less is more to an extent. The music is okay and the sound effects are inoffensive, but there's nothing particularly great in terms of sound design. I suspect this is to keep the player from going insane from hearing the same noises constantly. I didn't hear any voice lines which is slightly disappointing but not wholly unexpected. I don't recall Vampire Survivors having voice lines either, and Soulstone Survivors' voice lines got old pretty fast. I wouldn't mind some voice lines when choosing a character at the very least. Overall though, Warhammer Survivors seems to follow Vampire Survivors' mindset of just having less in the way of sound. There isn't too much to speak of here.

  Visuals

  The visuals are excellent. It follows the design styling set up by 40k Boltgun: pixel art with detailed backgrounds. If you were looking for something more akin to Soulstone Survivors or DRG Survivor, then I suspect you'll be a bit disappointed. This is basically 2D all the way. As a Survivors-like, it doesn't have a ton in the way of "backgrounds" however the map aesthetics, doodads, and overall art is great on the 40k map. I can't say the same about the AoS map though. The 40k map feels like it has a lot of detail and work put into it. It looks very much like an Imperial world overrun by the Tyranids. There are industrial and military doodads scattered randomly across the map. That's fine in terms of gameplay, but as far as aesthetic goes, it doesn't FEEL really 40k to me because it lacks clutter for the purpose of gameplay. Now, the AoS map has colors that are a little more muted aside from the warpstone, so it feels kind of generic and bland. Maybe that's the point, but my point still stands. If you look at the Total War games, the areas with Skaven corruption look awful, but in a good way.

  The character sprites and weapons look good too. The chainsword in particular has striking visuals and looks great. The characters and enemies you play as and come across respectively, are really well done. I'm not the staunchest supporter of the Ultramarines, as I'm more of a Lamenters, Blood Angels, and Blood Ravens fan, but Malum Caedo looks as advertised from 40k Boltgun and the Guardsmen have that classic Cadian aesthetic. I don't know a ton about AoS, so I can't speak to the accuracy of the AoS characters, but they look thematically correct. As for the enemies, while the sprites look good, I do have some complaints about some of the sprite usage as well as enemy projectiles. At time of writing, the enemy projectiles are just green balls of light, which are re-used assets for 40k and AoS; a small complaint but it stood out to me. In addition, the Termagants, despite holding weapons, are melee units. They're the starter Tyranids. That seems visually disingenuous. Streaming it in a Discord call, other friends had the same confusion.

  Also a small gripe, but at around the 20 minute mark when I had maxed as many weapons as possible, it was really difficult to see any enemies on my screen, simply because of all the clutter. I think Vampire Survivors handles it much better, since even though there is tons of visual clutter from the sprites, they felt less intrusive than the ones in Warhammer Survivors.

  Gameplay

  The gameplay is basically a 1:1 copy of Vampire Survivors. If you want Vampire Survivors with a pot of Nuln Oil, this is it. There are your typical weapon and survivability buffs. Certain weapons combine with certain passives to make the most powerful versions of weapons. Unfortunately almost every weapon in Warhammer Survivors already exists in Vampire Survivors. As an example, the default chainsword is the same as the default whip. They do vary a bit once it gets to evolved weapons however. In addition, the only weapon that I found to be "new" was D6 dice which fall from the sky and explode after a significant delay. I didn't particularly like using the dice since they tended to always fall to the bottom part of the map, so it seemed unreliable when combined with the delay and random explosion, which was dependent on the number on the die.

  I found the 40k Universe to be more enjoyable than the AoS one from a gameplay perspective. The starting character for 40k, Malum Caedo, gets an additional 10% damage per 10 levels up to 40 or 50%, as well as a damage received reduction which is useful. Furthermore the starting chainsword is pretty good after you have a few upgrades. I did not find the same experience in AoS, where the starting character gets a base movespeed buff as well as a scaling weapon range buff. At around the 15 minute mark, the issue I ran into was just not having enough damage to deal with the higher tier enemies. At the 20 minute mark, I definitely didn't have enough damage to deal with the high HP threats around the map, even with maxed out damage increases and multiple evolved weapons. I suspect this would become more manageable with maxing out damage from meta progression, but in the demo, there's no real goal outside of meta progression.

  Closing Thoughts

  I'm not saying the game isn't fun or enjoyable. The demo for Warhammer Survivors is fine if you want Vampire Survivors but Warhammer. It delivers that exact experience. I was hoping for something slightly more innovative than a reskin.

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