In a crowded action roguelike genre, you need to do something to stand out. I feel like the genre is at saturation point, and retheming doesn’t cut it anymore. Thankfully, Accretion doesn’t feel like an action roguelike half the time. Instead, it feels like a scientific astrophysics and particle simulator that just happens to be an action roguelike, too.
Accretion is all about mass, something my belly knows all too well. In a similar vein to games like Hole.IO and perhaps the Katamari series, you need to get the largest mass possible. Starting as a gas cloud, you gain mass by chasing down other celestial beings in space that are smaller in mass than you are. Instead of attacking them, you’ll use the gravitational pull (an area of effect circle around your mass) to overlap the celestial body you are chasing, and their mass will start transferring slowly to yours due to the gravitational pull. If the body you are chasing has a similar mass to yours, they’ll likely trigger the same thing, and this is why you’ll only want to tackle things smaller than you, because if their gravitational pull is greater than yours, you’ll lose mass in the long run and die. This mechanic makes Accretion play uniquely because gas clouds, stars, and other bodies will be floating around, and they chase or run away from enemies as part of a larger solar system. The food chain is in constant flux, and it is one of the best things about the game.
The universe moves slowly and gracefully at such a grand scale, so Accretion plays out like a slow-motion ballet. This won’t be to everyone’s liking, and it means that when you get hit or make a mistake, you are heavily penalised for it. Not only do you lose a lot of mass, but it’ll take ages to build it back up again. The more mass you have, the more abilities you gain as your body changes state. Instead of chasing other bodies around, you can trigger a particle wave that blocks other attacks for a short time, or grab smaller masses to become moons that will spin around you, crashing into other bodies and stealing their mass. There are several types of attacks, and knowing when to use them is key, as some can backfire. You’ll also need to be careful of other space anomalies. Different time pockets exist, meaning you might move faster, slower, or not be able to enter at all. Weird worms can gyrate and flick celestial bodies around like cueballs. If you choose the chaos system variant of the game, it’s spicy and beautiful to watch.
At a certain point in Accretion, your mass gets so big that the game flips perspective from a top-down perspective to a 2D side-on perspective. This change initially had me excited, yet it led to perhaps my biggest frustration with the game. When this happens, you can no longer avoid enemies that are bigger than you for very long. The RNG to place you in a position that gives you a chance of surviving the switch seems to be very harsh, and so you may have spent half an hour getting to the switch, only to be placed into an unwinnable situation about 50% of the time. This could be me misunderstanding something, but I was getting intensely annoyed at just how often I was flanked by two giant enemies on either side of me, and there was no way out for me without dying. If there were save points, or the game wasn’t so slow and deliberate to get me to that point, it’d be less of an issue. Sadly, it meant that half an hour was down the drain. Nothing carries over, just like a true roguelike, but it didn’t feel like I had any control over the outcome. I hope this gets resolved in the future.
Get beyond that issue, and Accretion is a unique, stylised, at times beautiful astrophysics simulator with an action game attached. The campaign mode is long, large, and quite tough. Each level has a time limit to complete a certain goal by, and whilst they are initially quite generous, one mistake can set you back several minutes. Precision and a balanced approach to risk win out most of the time. There are also procedurally generated universes where you specify the level of chaos as the challenge. Chaos makes Accretion far more engaging and fun – it’s the best way to play.
Whilst the massive rng balancing issue hugely hampered my overall enjoyment, there is something unique and intriguing about Accretion. I appreciate how the maths and physics all play out in front of you. At times, it makes maths look beautiful and hypnotic. This is a niche game, but I can see some gamers clicking with it and sinking more hours into this than a black hole could swallow. It is a labour of love, and that shines through. Accretion will not be for everyone, but it’s got that hardcore cult following appeal that I hope will catch on over time.
Review copy provided by the developer.
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