Info:
Developer: Nooner Bear Creations
Indie Game Stand "Today's Deal": Until August 14th
Did you ever had your wine cellar invaded by merciless thugs that completely ruined your most exquisite bottles of wine? Of course you did, who hasn't right?! But don't you worry, it's time for revenge, it's time for... Vintage Year!
As you can probably guess by now, Vintage Year is an indie game that features a wine cellar being invaded by a band of criminals, these criminals are only known as the Skull Faction and the wine cellar is unique as it holds a one of a kind wine that has aged through the ages and has become the ultimate bottle of booze (maybe it's a barrel).
Your job is to retrieve this precious liquid by whatever means necessary, to do that you'll have to shoot and stab your way through a set of randomly generated levels that get tougher and tougher as you go along.
Vintage Year is a really interesting game because it mixes and matches a bunch of different aspects and gameplay mechanics from several genres like shmups, twin stick shooters and some roguelike elements like permadeath and randomly generated levels. While it's not a completely original setup, it's still pretty cool to see this bunch of different game mechanics working together and providing a really interesting experience overall.
If you think games like FTL or Sword of the Stars: The Pit are cool but need a bit more action then you're going to love Vintage Year, while it is not as deep or strategic as the examples I just mentioned, it is easier to pick up and play. As long as you know that a gun shoots and a knife stabs you're pretty much good to go.
Strategic movement and knowing your enemies only becomes relevant when you reach later stages of the game or in the occasional boss fight, much like Sword of the Stars: The Pit you advance from randomly generated floor to randomly generated floor with not only enemies getting tougher and hitting harder as you move along but the levels themselves also becoming harder to navigate, expect to find more and more tight corridors with little to no room for dodging those pesky bullets with each level that passes.
In order to keep each run interesting and fresh you can choose a different "hero" (5 available at the start, more to unlock) at the start of every run, each has a unique trait that will affect the way you play the game just slightly, unfortunately the developer Nooner Bear Creations needs to do a bit of fine tuning here as some of the skills are pretty underpowered. Still it's a nice idea and with more and more updates coming out every now and then, I'm sure that this feature will be improved upon.
From my experience with Vintage Year I can say that it's a challenging game, the occasional cheap shot does not ruin those moments where you are able to dodge and weave through a rain of bullets coming at you from 3 or 4 different enemies.
Unfortunately in its current form Vintage Year probably does not have the staying power of games like The Binding of Isaac or FTL, still the developer (great guy that helped me out with some technical issues) seems committed to add more and more content to the game which makes me hopeful that in the near future Vintage Year can indeed compete with the aforementioned titles.
Should you get it?
Yes.
One of those games that you quickly learn how to play but take a long time to master, Vintage Year is action packed and strategic at the same time. If you like roguelikes/roguelites then you will probably enjoy the time you spend playing Vintage Year.
Nooner Bear Creations Website: Link
Vintage Year Steam Greenlight Page: Link
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