Title: Slime 3K: Rise Against Despot
Developer: Konfa Games
Publisher: tinyBuild
Release Date: November 2, 2023
Reviewed on: PC via Steam
Price: $4.99

Introduced in the early 90s by Toaplan, bullet hells ask the player to navigate waves of projectiles and enemies. These waves move in hypnotic, often rhymic patterns, as the player works to take down the bosses and survive their seemingly impossible attacks.

Nearly 30 years later, this was reversed and the bullet heaven was born. The player became the entity spawning bullets and minions, as unending waves of enemies seek to breach their defenses and take them down.

I have been here since almost the beginning. I started playing Vampire Survivors only a few weeks after launch, I have played many of the games that followed in its wake, both the uncreative clones and the games that built on the idea to make something worthwhile and new.

Slime 3K: Rise Against Despot is the latest game entering this competitive market. It seeks to set itself apart with deck building and twin stick shooter elements.

Disclosure: Boss Rush Network received a review code for the PC version of Slime 3K: Rise Against Despot. Neither Konfa Games nor tinyBuild made any stipulations upon this review, nor did they or any representatives read it prior to publication.

The Premise

Slime 3K takes place in the world of Konfa Games’ other titles. As the AI overlord Despot makes humans and monsters battle to the death in Despot’s Game and Despotism 3K, a blob of slime escapes the lab and sets out on a path of destruction. It’s a bullet heaven game; the plot is only a bonus. Like at the arcades, it’s all about the gameplay.

Gameplay Mechanics

Slime 3K is a bullet heaven game, in the same vein as Vampire Survivors, Brotato, and Rogue: Genesia. You begin the game as an underpowered character who, though level ups and judicious movement, become a god of destruction worthy to challenge the boss by the end of the level—or, if you make mistakes or your luck runs out, you’re destroyed.

Three elements set Slime 3K apart: twin-stick shooting, deck building, and challenge runs.

 Slime 3K is the only game I can think of that incorporates classic, arcade-style twin-stick elements. While all guns are set to autofire, you control the aim. The only game I can think of in a similar vein is 20 Minutes Till Dawn, but that is more comparable to Colt Canyon in mechanics.

But only a portion of the weapons take advantage of this mechanic. Most of the armory are genre-traditional projectiles or effects on a cooldown that you do not personally aim.

The deck building requires you to take at least four cards from each rarity tier, and each tier during a run is gated behind the shop’s level. You can either focus on a specific weapon type, or go for a jack of all trades. However, passive abilities like Targeted Bonus (which increases damage for targeted weapons), encourage you to incorporate as many weapons of a similar type at once. I wish there was a mechanic to also encourage players in the opposite direction, toward wackier, “unfocused” builds.

Lastly, Slime 3K’s levels are each based around a specific challenging gimmick. Level 5 only has ranged enemies and very little cover. Level 8 has enemies that spawn their own screen-filling minions. Level 9 is a maze that requires the player to keep moving before they are cornered by powerful enemies. This is wonderfully interesting, and I wish that there were more challenges, even just reusing the exact same maps and already existing enemies. The specific circumstances that each level asks you to plan and account for are incredibly fun, and showcase the game at its best. Unfortunately, it’s over all too quickly.

Gameplay in Action

The goal is to survive the entire length of the level. Once the countdown timer ends, a boss will arrive. This boss is your final challenge to beat the level. As usual for bullet heavens, your main gameplay action is movement and your main method for gaining power is leveling up via killing enemies.

There are a number of power-ups to keep in mind: the vending machines that allow you to level up (and provide money), road signs that significantly increase your movement speed, humans in tanks that you can absorb for health, gumball machines that will take our surrounding enemies (and now provide a few moments of invulnerability, diamonds which provide a significant amount of invulnerability, and the all-important barrels of radioactive sludge that are part of your meta-progression.

Progression

Progression is a mixed bag. You gain more cards with end-of-level XP, which unlocks new cards for your deck. It’s smooth as long as you’re advancing quickly, but if you’re hitting a wall and don’t have the cards you think you need, it can lead to a grind. There are usually a few ways past any challenge, but if you fall behind the developer’s expected path it can feel like a grind until you catch up.

The radioactive slime that grants upgrades is a smooth process. Unlocking most of the skill tree requires completing extra challenges (which is fun!), and you will always have just enough points to unlock something. It’s well-paced.

Listening to Players

I nearly rated Slime 3K an entire star lower. The pre-release builds and the retail release had fundamentally different progressions and deck-building. The initial release version’s progress was incremental, sometimes glacial. Getting the power to overcome even mid-game levels would take hours. The deck-building was restrictive, demanding a large deck that made leveling the slime properly difficult, even frustrating.

Then Konfa Games did the most remarkable thing: they listened to their audience and synthesized the freer, pre-release structure with the retail structure. Upgrades can be completed in a reasonable pace. Deck building allows you to make smaller decks, concentrated on a specific strategy, sacrificing utility for focus.

The game is better for it. In a few important moves, the game went from flawed, but it has promise to a fun, unique game that has the potential to grow into a great one. Players are not the enemy; when their feedback is taken properly, they are one of the most powerful assets that a developer could ever have. I want to applaud Konfa Games for not only listening to their players and recognizing there was a problem, but finding the right solutions to those problems.

Performance

While slowdown is almost expected for a bullet heaven game, as thousands of enemies crowd the screen, Slime 3K performs better than most.

Final Score

At its best, Slime 3K is an interesting take on the bullet heaven genre: incorporating twin stick shooting and deck building into a game that asks you to rebuild your approach from the ground up to meet each challenge map. At its best, it’s one of the better games in the genre and captures a frantic, arcade energy as each run ends in only a few minutes.

The problem is that each of the main mechanics have limits.

Only about a third of the weapons take advantage of the twin-stick inspiration; otherwise, you move and auto-aim as you do in most other bullet heaven games.

The deck-building is an interesting, ambitious idea that could shake players out of always choosing the same weapons and abilities. As is, it’s currently over-tuned toward asking the player to do uniform builds (for example, bonuses to targeted weapons or to minions), to get the most out of sacrificing a weapon/ability slot, you are encouraged to use as many similar weapons as possible. I wish there was something encouraging players in the other direction as well, toward wackier builds and unusual combinations.

There are only nine levels at time of writing. I wish that there were more challenges, even just reusing the exact same maps and already existing enemies. The specific circumstances that each level asks you to plan and account for are incredibly fun, and showcase the game at its best. Unfortunately, it’s over all too quickly.

Slime 3K is already worth your time. It just has the potential to become great, if the developers focus on these aspects of the game.

Featured Image: Konfa Games

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