Action roguelikes and clicker games. A mash-up made in heaven, surely? Well, this is what solo developer EagleEye Games has developed with Slime Squisher. A lone strawberry is stuck in the middle of a field with waves of slimes coming to attack and squish it. You’ll need to click your way to victory in a surprisingly well-thought-out take on the action roguelike genre.
Slime Squisher is all about two things: clicking and weapon loadouts. Whilst you’ll have a base click that causes damage when you click on slimes as they march towards an initially defenseless strawberry, that will only get you so far. After every wave of slimes, you’ll get to choose an upgrade from a random selection of upgrades. That might be to increase the click damage or the chance of a critical click attack (massive damage) or to reduce the cooldown between each click. There are also weapons you can attach to the strawberry that will either spin or rotate around it, acting like a melee attack or a laser gun. Each time you reselect them, they’ll be more powerful, spin faster, or fire lasers/staplers/bullets more often.
The critical third set of weapons are the up to 7 weapons slots you can add to your special ability rack. They all have a random chance of occurring (which is never clearly explained), but their triggers will depend on the player either clicking on a slime or killing a slime. The special abilities are varied. You might get bouncing balls, boulders, or spiked logs rolling across the screen at specific targets. Others, like the sword or katana, spin around for an area of effect attack. Kunai zip across the screen with the potential to instakill slimes. Poison darts will incur poison and seep slime health, whilst another skill inflicts bleed to bring a similar result. There isn’t anything outrageous or revolutionary here, but it is all tied to every click you make. Since you have a recharge between clicks, and slimes will come at you at pace on hard mode, you’ll be prioritising what to click on, or what to kill to hopefully trigger those special moves and start a chain reaction.
The other thing that keeps you from clicking all the time is shooter slimes. These walk towards Strawberry slower but shoot bullets repeatedly, which you’ll need to block using your mouse. This is where shield upgrades or a well-timed lucky laser attack can help you out, but that comes at the cost of having more attacks. It is a balancing act and one that’s been well thought out. You won’t win the first time, either. There is an overarching skill tree giving the roguelike (or rather roguelite in this case) side of the game its upgrades. This gives you more health, a better starting click damage and click recharge rate, slows down slimes and their attacks, and opens up more weapon slots (to get to the 7) and reroll abilities. Alongside three difficulty modes, each with its own end boss, there are 4 other variations of the game. The most interesting is choosing your upgrades without the game pausing. Be quick!
There is nothing surprising with Slime Squisher, but it plays well and has been well thought-out and designed to keep the player engaged. That’s something that so many action roguelikes miss the mark on. Whilst the basic visuals and lack of flair elsewhere mean it doesn’t stand out from the crowd, Slime Squisher provides a good 3-4 hours of decent clicker killer enjoyment. Solid.
A review copy of the game was provided by the developer. Slime Squisher is out now on Steam.
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