ReMix is what happens when the Vampire Survivors genre tackles a rhythm action game. Take a healthy dose of VS, add in some Crypt of the Necrodancer and add in some Deemo style narrative and you have a good idea of what ReMix brings to the table. It is incredibly addictive and open ended, with absolutely hundreds of ways to build your runs.
ReMix has six characters to unlock and play by completing individual runs with them at different difficulty levels. Each run has waves of enemies to kill in an arena setting but you don’t have to kill everything – you just have to survive the time limit without dying. Each character plays very differently from the other and everything follows their beat of their unique song. Some characters auto attack but require you to move on the beat. Others have free movement but need you to attack on the beat. One follows a predetermined route around the arena but requires you to direct your attacks on the beat. They all require different playstyles to get the best out of them and it adds depth to the game.
Alongside your main character, you can recruit up to six bandmates to join you. Think of these a bit like additional weapons and you buy them using coins you earn by killing enemies. The interesting spin here is that each bandmate not only has its own attack style (missiles, lasers, area of attack) but they also have a specialism. This can be adding burn damage, critical hits, slowing enemies or targeting more damage to enemies with more than 70% health or less than 30% health. How you build these out is crucial to your tactics because you can have multiple bandmates targeting the same things, or buy multiple levels of the same bandmate and then merge them to level them up. Levelled up characters trigger their specialism more often.
Alongside this, as you clear each wave of enemies, you’ll be levelling up your main character and be given upgrades for them to choose from. Boost your maximum health, health replenishment or add a vampire skill to syphon off enemy health as you cause damage. You can increase your own damage, critical attack percentage or your bandmates skill damage or burn damage. Luck plays a factor here too so you can increase that too. Then when you get to the shop, you will be given other items to buy alongside your bandmates to boost your stats too. A cool sub gameplay loop here is the investment feature. You can spend coins or upgrades to invest in future waves where coins will be paid back to you in every round afterwards. This is a requirement in the harder difficulties so you can buy really powerful upgrade items, but its a risk vs reward balance that you won’t always get right.
All these mechanics sound complex but they merge into each other effortlessly and support each other superbly. I felt in control of my destiny whilst juggling what was being thrown at me in the shops or upgrades too. Getting a powerful group together is satisfying and there are tons of viable set ups to try, especially as each character brings their own twist on the base gameplay. For instance, you can improve your speed and try to avoid attacks but that won’t work for the dash attack character where defence stats are critical to success.
The base gameplay is great too. The default graphics have a grainy VHS effect which you can remove and doing so makes everything easier to see. You can see where all the attacks are headed with clear red projectiles and trajectories so you can move out of the way and plan your escape. Its very easy to spot attacks but sometimes the background is a bit busy. Some backdrop buildings you can walk through and others you can’t and I couldn’t always work out what was what until I tried them.
Lastly, wrapping around all of this fantastic gameplay is a story around how sound was banned and removed from the world. You unlock segments of it by completing difficulty related runs. The overarching story is ok, and you can level up bandmate synergy by reading their own personal stories that unlock the more you use the bandmates. Whilst your main characters do not have their own story, completion of their six difficulty levels unlock the main story. It also levels up your main characters too, so even if you fail a run you’ll earn XP. This levels up the main six characters and doing so not only raises their base stats but also raises their weight limit. This is because you can equip weighted items to characters to boost certain stats more, such as their special attack length. These are super helpful as you can equip several of them and since the items themselves can be levelled up to be even more powerful over time, its worth investing in as you unlock the story.
I have had a superb time playing ReMix. Initially, I did run into some momentary freezes when in the shop between waves but post launch patches have almost completely removed this minor annoyance. Alongside Vampire Survivors and Brotato, ReMix completes the action roguelike genre triple threat for me – with Greedland waiting in the wings to make it a quartet when it exits early access. This is a top tier experience that deserves a lot of attention and love. Recommended.
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