20XX Review

As a fan of the Mega Man series, Batterystaple Games and Fire Hose Games’ roguelike platformer 20XX has been on my radar. It doesn’t hide the fact that the game is an homage to the gameplay that made Capcom’s Super Fighting Robot so popular, it’s difficult, it has cool power-ups and it’s hard.

As much as it pays tribute, it also improves on everything, making it damn near impossible to put down.

20XX starts out like most Mega Man titles. A city is under attack by experimental robots and its up to Nina, a blue clad lady robot with gun for an arm, and Ace, a red clad sword wielding robot, to save the day and defeat the robot leaders while being judged by discount Dr. Wily.

The game doesn’t give you any story to follow but instead throws you into the fray to fend for yourself. While the game shares a similar platforming premise to Mega Man, 20XX improves the formula with Roguelike elements including procedurally-built stages, character upgrades, and a punishing difficulty while still presenting the best difficulty curve that comes to recent memory.

The game is split between four types of arenas – Fire, Garden, Sky, Ice – each with 2 different bosses. The levels hold their own unique threats including projectile traps, laser beams and various bad guys that will just get in your way. With the levels procedurally-built, you’re never sure what you’re going to get thrown at you.

You’ll have plenty of help though as stat boosting items and weapons can be conveniently found all over the place, and defeating levels give you the option of improving your health, increasing your nuts (the game’s currency) or taking the Boss’ power which can be used in a similar Megaman fashion where one boss is heavily weak against it.

Still don’t expect to clear all 8 levels (plus a the final boss run) on your first go. Dying makes you lose everything except for Soul Chips, which can be used at the main base to purchase new permanent upgrades, as well as single run upgrades and the ability to add new upgrades or weapons to your run.

What is really amazing about 20XX is just how smooth the game is. Everything from jumping, dashing, attacking and using your powers are so perfect that if you screw up and die on your run, it’s likely your own damn fault. It also does a great job at adding Co-Operative play that doesn’t hinder players who may be better than the others, while still rewarding players who work together.

20XX does an amazing job at being a fun roguelike, balancing its great controls and punishing difficulty to the point of “one more run” turns into 3 more hours of playing the game without noticing. Whether you’re playing couch co-op, online co-op, tackling its various challenge modes, you do not want to miss out on this great indie title that surpasses it’s the game it’s playing homage to.