Codename Analysis: Ocean Keeper

I came to Xbox Code name: Guardian of the Ocean, And roguelite which mixes type waves survivor with cave exploration and mining on the sea floor and aboard a mecha which needs a lot of improvement.

Retro style games This is a Ukrainian company that primarily aims to be of service to other developers. Within its game catalog, the majority are mobile games, being Codename: Ocean Guardian the first to be on other platforms, including XBOX.

Explore the unknown

Codename: Ocean Guardian It invites us to explore to improve and survive the waves of sea monsters that, for whatever reason, attack you. The infinite loop of growing, upgrading and sustainability. Los roguelite They taught us to iterate and enter the spiral of progress to achieve excellence. We always have improvements stake and permanent. Here they are all obtained by breaking stones. Between waves we have a period of exploration which allows us to enter caves and dig to collect materials scattered very wisely throughout the cave. The most common element being the first found in large veins and the rarest and most valuable being the one that requires more depth, effort and its quantity is minimal. This makes sense and evolution follows this course. So far everything is ok. This is the word: correct.

These resources that we find are dedicated to repairing two different and at the same time important aspects of underwater life: digging and surviving. We upgraded the character (a diver with a drilling arm) to get more resources and our Mecha (a four-legged machine) to give him greater offensive capability so as not to perish in intense waves of enemies. It is in this duo that we find the first obstacle and possible strong point of this type of game. Choose first to be able to collect more and in the medium term to improve the weapons or vice versa. So far it's great to be able to create strategy like in all games. What seems impossible at first, constant updates make it possible a little more bearable (very little)but the difficulty curve is affected and they do not allow you to move forward… This is another question that we can ask ourselves in Codename: Ocean Guardian: Go where?

Empty shell.

I don't know what the need is for doing what I'm doing and why I have to grow and endure enemy attacks beyond… that: growing up. Don't get me wrong, I like Sudoku or Tetris and I don't need to think that the future of NASA depends on deciphering this digital puzzle, but in this case it's not such a fun game in itself. There are certain areas that have riddles which seems to reveal part of the history of a lost civilization. But beyond power ups That doesn't give you much. Additionally, many waves take time to resolve, not because of their complexity but because of their length. It means devoting time to farmingSo I try to evolve. Every 5 waves there is a Boss and the difficulty increases exponentially. We are not here to waste time playing archeology which also has no rewarding rewards.

More or less the same thing happens with the bosses I was talking about. We are (well) used to patterns that mean an end point and in some cases a full stop. In Codename: Ocean Guardian These patterns, which appear alone every few waves, do not have this meaning, in fact they do not. They do not transfer you to another area or offer you advantage additional. A total of zero rewards for killing enemies that take more health than any other. and leave you shivering at the mercy of the next wave. There is no evolution in this sense since the bosses repeat themselves, behaving the same way but faster, doing more damage and having more health. While they don't pose much of a problem to kill, there is an alarming imbalance between the difficulty curve and the mech's improvement. Even permanent improvements are not as decisive as in others roguelite.

At shallow depth

I think we now all know clearly that the failure of Codename: Ocean Guardian lies in its design. Copy several models that may be attractive, like Dome Keeper or Wall World, but without soul. You can fill it with weapons, but the clashes lead nowhere. To the lack of direction of our actions is added a very flat visual section. The models used are very generic, I counted around 7 enemy models (counting the bosses) and the environments are so little varied that even if they are procedurally generated the differences are minimal.

Conclusions.

It must be said: the version of the game is 0.8, so strictly speaking the game is in Early Access even if when you buy it, they don't tell you this anywhere. Another clue is that he also doesn't have any achievements that could give me clues to an ending or goal. Codename: Ocean Guardian This could be a great game because the mechanics are engaging, but it's empty. It might be for now, but it looks like he still has a long way to go. The rasp without the muscles does not make the fish move.