MineGeon: Renegades is as much Enter the Gungeon as Farlands is Stardew Valley. It’s not a clone, per se, but familiar territory if you’ve played the hugely popular bullet hell/dungeon crawler. A pixel art rogue-like suitable for solo play of as a co-op, as can be predicted, I played this entirely alone (with the comfort of family in the same room – sniff, sniff), it’s pretty heavy going, but offers a wealth of extras, progression and pixels.
You play a group of Renegades, who, after a failed raid, are now on the back foot and looking to escape from their impending demise. While they escape their initial pursuers, they’re soon rooted and unable to proceed any further. Luckily for them, they’re above PAIMO, a planet rich with resources that signify a bigger score than their past endeavours. Cue some raids, bullet hell and plenty of skills, loot and enemies.
The crew includes an all-rounder (who I’ve immediately forgotten), a gunslinger, and a tank, who’s a shark. Naturally, you’ll go for the shark, but will find yourself locked in with them for quite a few runs until you start to develop their skillset and utilise their stats based on your play style. Luckily, you can recruit little helpers who are great at looting on your behalf, or attacking enemies/taking aggro from angry snot bubbles. Though real life socialites and reel in their friends to join them in a co-op.
Like any rogue-like, you need a loop/hook to keep playing and that comes from the grinding. Besides combat, you can manually chip away at resources to upgrade your base with new features and improvements, and, like mentioned, some of your little helpers can haul some of this in for you, though I’d recommend having a helper that’ll take some aggro on your behalf.
Early enemies in MineGeon: Renegades aren’t particularly threatening, and the bullet hell aspect is non-existent at first, yet the first bosses prove relatively challenging in your first runs. It’s not that they’re hard-as-nails, more to do with you being underpowered, or perhaps selecting the wrong weapon for the job.
Blasting away enemies and collecting loot will raise your XP and offer gadgets that can improve your mining skills, firepower, fire-rate, plus much more. Unlike the recent Sephiria, MineGeon: Renegades is self-explanatory and there will always be a choice that will benefit the way you play, or at least boast a buff you actually understand and likely to apply.
What differs the most to other rogue-likes is the path selection. Instead of choosing a path that leads to a fork for another stage, you select a batch of stages until fighting a boss. My biggest criticism of MineGeon: Renegades is perhaps the readability on a small screen (granted, I was playing on the AYN Thor rather than the Steam Deck, so that’s on me).
The icons for each stage aren’t immediately clear, so you can find yourself locked into an unfavourable path. The worst part however was reading tooltips or understanding what I’d just picked up on the fly and it was illegible. Again, that’s on me, but do note, the sprites and text are tiny. Still, the gameplay is there, and there’s a few stabilisers on hand such as auto aiming, which I opted for due to having ickle joysticks to navigate.
Kickstone Studios’ MineGeon: Renegades would probably be a better draw with other players, but I’ve been playing Enter the Gungeon solo and could happily play isolated for hours. The loot opportunities in this could also lead to a falling out with friends, but then again, maybe that’s the appeal? Personally, I’m happy with the solo experience, and with a good selection of biomes, looting and upgrades, there’s plenty here for replayability. Even if it’s a little hard to see everything on the screen at times.
