Post apocalyptic bar crawls.


I am bad at games so it is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard for me but it is pretty ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ fun.

At first, this game seems like a cool, dumbed down version of Fallout in a way - There is crafting, 'coolers' which are like vaults, stat growth and general world exploration. The vaults are randomly generated it seems, so you never get the same thing twice. You get to upgrade equipment and weapons, customize your own character AND the tutorial is pretty good.

Overall I *was* really excited to get into this game.

I have to give it a 'no' for a review because there are a few aspect that totally killed it for me - and not in a good way.
1) If you spend too much time in the cooler a hunter comes with crazy high HP and a rapid firing gun and basically insta kills you. This wouldn't be quite so bad if it weren't for #2.
2) When you die, your character isn't regenerated back at a safe point minus their gear or anything, a completely new character is randomly generated and put into it's place.

That did it for me, I can handle dying and repeating a level until I beat it, even if it involves a stupidly hard boss fight, but I HATE that it wipes your character, what is the point of customizing your character's features and name if it's just going to be replaced anyways?

If these things were changed, I would recomend it, but for now, it's not worth the frustration.

Take one Fallout. Make sure to remove everything that isn't a dumb joke. Replace the 1950s aesthetic with a 1980s aestethic. Add 1980s inventory management and interface. Add cel shading and procedural generation to taste. Then throw it in the garbage, because it's terrible.

Great combat! Great atmosphere! But next time it might be a good idea to call an actual game designer and have them to do a once over of your product before you try and sell it.

Basically every single design choice and system of this game is laughably broken. From the insanely small inventory (you have 10 slots, a full suit of armour, weapon, and ammo take up 7 of them), the unavoidable traps and floor hazards, the bugged quests with placeholders instead of graphics, you really feel like this is a game no one play tested. Then you find out about the SOB system, where an unkillable hunter starts looking for you if you are on a floor to long and start to understand that in most areas there is a change he spawns between you and the exit, or you lose the FIRST quest item and discover that recovering it will cost more money then I earned in 10 hours of play and you just give up. No one tried to make this game fun, and there is no fun to be had.

10/10 WOULD FANNYPACK AGAIN

WASTED is a FPS perma-death RPG dungeon crawling shooter with a post-apocalyptic/retro theme set in the 80’s, think of a combination of fallout new vegas/borderlands with additional dungeon crawling elements.
You are (randomized character name) and you are one of the drunkards who drinks booze for buffs and perks throughout his adventure for more booze in the underground coolers (vaults)

Pro’s

+Original radio music

+Unique loveable characters

+Wide variety of weapons and customizations

+Fast gunplay, gameplay and replay value

+Randomized dungeons (coolers)

+Permanent perks and separate short term dungeon buffs

+Humorous dialogue: The dialogue stays somewhat close to home with Fallout with a sort of hilarious, twisted and bizarre, but relatable sense of humor (While not to dark) having silly, but strangely loveable characters.
My personal favorite so far being Val Killmore the total bro dude

+Good voice acting

+Unique game play elements and strats you can use with them

+Pop culture references that are actually relevant and funny NOT JUST GENERIC COPY PASTE MEMES

+Really cool dev (Don’t know if I should count this as a pro, but he’s really cool and responsive to suggestions and ideas on the community hub, and seriously sounds like a guy I would want to down a few radioactive drinks with)

Neutrals

Art style: The art style I personally find visually pleasing, but most likely will vary player to player

Semi-permadeath (you keep missions you were doing and can buy back special one of a kind items you lost your previous life but besides that, RIP items that you didn’t store safely at your house)

The S.O.B Purifier: High level enemy that follows you with a minigun when you take too long AGES in levels, I personally don’t mind it and I think it changes up the gameplay, but others have complained about it on the discussions before.

RNG Flasks: Let me explain, there are 2 kinds of drinks in the game, Flasks and Beers. When you drink a beer you get a hangover (a permanent perk) that carry’s over with you for the rest of the game (In some cases you can remove it) downing a beer to avoid death to make it back out of the cooler is a cool and safe strat to do if you’re about to die, even if you get a negative hangover (IE: +10% Melee damage taken from enemies) The beers are cool in my opinion, but the flasks, THE FLASKS….
The flasks either carry positive, neutral, or negative buffs; but always seems to work against you in the end, either screwing you over, or giving you some lucky god tier runs. I’ve had to drink beers and get hangovers that are barely beneficial or just debuffs. I’ll type out a couple of examples of them

+Hairy feet: +3 Sneak
+Unbearable: Bear traps only deal 50% damage
+Trappin’: Bear traps no longer stun you
+Heavy Knuckles: +3 Hit

♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Bricks: A brick spawns on enemy corpses per kill

-Big Feet: -5 Sneak
-Soft Knuckles: -5 Hit
-Half life: Max hp halved Nice science joke btw

See the trend here? It’s like this for all of the characters buffs you gain from the flasks, the positive buffs are WAY outweighed by the negative buffs, while the positives give +3 to a stat the negatives give -5 to a stat; not to mention some of the positive buffs are BEARly beneficial see what I did there? While the negative buffs can easily screw you over. However, the game never requires you to drink them, and has a confirmation popup that asks if you really want to drink this crap, so I’m letting this slide under the neutral section

Con’s

-Unfair Randomized dungeon rooms: Sometimes the game will give you rooms with locked doors, some of the time you opening them can get you killed by some really silly ways. (My favorite so far has been dying by opening a locked door, being welcomed to a shotgun trap that triggers, blasting me in the face along with mutant freak men that open fire on me with assault rifles ending in my death)

-Enemy’s bullets and projectiles have WAY to much knockback

-Bad voice acting/quality: Most of the voice over’s are spot on and really deliver perfectly, but some characters voice over’s seem somewhat low quality (Not god awful, but enough to notice and be irritating)

-Frames Per Second: This only happens to me on the outside hub areas (where you don't fight at) but is still annoying none the less, while not too bad it still makes my FPS go from 80 FPS in cooler to 35-50 Outside.

I got this game 4 days before the launch and time I am writing this at (6/7/2016) from the Humble Monthly subscription (12$) after originally only subscribing to get Rocket League from the group of games, WASTED has been my favorite from the group, and I’ve honestly had a blast playing this rage inducing masterpiece, and wish there were other games like it out there. Everything about it seems planed out and works together well enough to support its ridiculousness and silly story that you actually find yourself slowly interested in it. So far this is my favorite game of 2016.

TLDR:
Wasted is a post apocalyptic rage inducing joy ride shooter with loveable characters, cool guns and some good laughs

I never write reviews, but since I got to play this game early, along with the fact there are no public reviews I give WASTED 8.5/10

Welcome to 1980. Welcome... to the end of the world. All of the inteligent people died. The stupid lives.

WASTED is... many things. That being a Fallout-esque Borderlands-looking Rogue Legacy-progressing Teleglitch-randomising Spelunky-paced and overall unique rogue-like game. WOW THAT'S A LOT OF WORDS

And now, for an actual review:

• The intro probably left you bonkers, so let me explain that for you: oh, uhm... I actually don't know where to start. How about the premise.
  
  
• The whole thing the game's got running for it is that by the end of the year 1980 a nuclear holocaust happened between the communists and America. To prevent the population from dying, the so called "coolers" were created as a shelter against radiation. Everything is done ala Fallout style so far. However, there's a twist! All of the people in the cooler ended up drunk! So when the earth became repopulable again, everybody was stupid! They drank all the booze they could find, injected everything that was sharp in them and the currency for trading became TP(short for TOILER PAPER), which I have to agree with TotalBiscuit, it actually makes more sense than the Bottlecap currency in Fallout.
  Perhaps you heard about a world where everyone's an idiot, but this game is the first one to put it on paper and it does its job perfectly.
  
  
• And before talking the gameplay aspect, you must think that the story must be weak or mediocre. Now you'd be surprise when I say it... IT'S NOT! It's actually got a good solid story! The world and atmosphere is depicted as you can expect it to be, with wasters(game's pick on wastelanders) spewing non-sense out of their mouth and everything that shines is worth one million more than the second thing that doesn't shine. Now for the story I actually don't want to spoil ANYTHING whatsoever, so I'll just leave that be for now.
  
  
• So, the gameplay. Starting right off the bat, your goal in this game is to get drunk. How do you get drunk? By going in a cooler, of course. The coolers are essentially the rogue-like aspect of this game, in which the map of every floor is randomly generated. And for the most part you'll be spending time exploring all the loose ends until the big scary minigun guy gets ye', which will get to that in a second.
  
  The gameplay in itself is an actual RPG with many FPS elements. You hear that Fallout 4? I said actual RPG, Google it. Anyway, the RPG consists of the loot you find across, which is surprisingly diverse, which again, we'll get to that in a bit, and the charm that makes you the drunkard of the wastes, your S.P.E.C.I.A.L.- S.H.O.T.S.. These are special attributes that change your gameplay, and it's pretty significant. This way, you can actually do multiple playthroughs trying different styles, like laser weapons, melee berserk, gun nut etc. Unlike Fallout however, stats not only can be increased, but they can be decreased as well, meaning you can do literal negative damage at its worse of times. What makes this so worthy of giving a mentioning is how stupid some things can devolve to, which is better to be experienced on your own skin, really.
  
  I have talked about how it's so close to Fallout. Now how about Borderlands? You have 2 ways of playing the game: one being where you are a purist and try to stay as sober as possible, or drink all of the booze possible, turning you into God. The farming of the drinks is surprisingly addicting. And fun. As you go deeper into the cooler, better drinks start to show up, and you won't believe how many of them are there! From simple stat boosts to unique drinks such as "slowing down time in the air" the variety in everything is quite possibly amazing. As an ending point on this topic, the farming is really fun and the rpg play extremely well, with some minor balance issues here and there, but not really worthy of criticizing too hard imho
  
  
• The enemies in this here game are represented by a couple of factions, each one having its own characteristics and backstory and specific combat styles. All I have to say is that everything isn't "many but bland", instead is "few and distinguishable". In the first cooler you'll see just normal generic raiders, but later find charging laser shooting robots and samurais that leap from wall to wall to get you. And that's just to tease you, oh boy, there's more past this point.
  
  Oh, and don't you think I forgot about Mr. Miniguy from earlier. If you spend too much time on a cooler, this big duderino beast will come out to kill you, the S.O.B. Purifier. He has 600 hp with good armor and carries a minigun. If you've seen some negative reviews, you've clearly seen alot of 'em talk just about him. This guy is to make sure you play the game at a high pace and you don't take too much time on the floor. Everyone tends to disagree with this mechanic. I, as a potential future game designer, couldn't agree more with it. Listen, before throwing ♥♥♥♥ at me, how many of you would just stealth the entirity of the floor without getting in any sort of combat whatsoever? You'd all do that, and the game would turn really boring and repetitive and so forth. With this guy, you're always on your toes, or else your booty might be taken away by this guy. And to be frank with you, this guy becomes a JOKE on later levels! I did a complete farming run, and he couldn't do jack to me! I actually killed him specifically for rifle ammo, which is pretty funny. In all honesty, he should be buffed for later coolers, so he keeps being a challenge to the player instead of an ammo sink. But that's just me and my silly dev dreams. Movin on.
  
  
• As a final point, the dailies. These... are the best feature in this whole damn game. Now there are a lot more things to be put in this review, but I'm afraid of Steam cutting me short after every sentence I write, so might as well. The daily runs are, well, a run where you start it up daily and compete on the leaderboard, ez pz. Then what's so damn good about them? Is that you start from ground zero and the run keeps on going forever! Well, until you die, anyway. So none of your brought equipment, none of your special booze powers, just you, your skill, and ALL of the enemies of the game mish-mashed together for an ultimate experience. The difficulty is also much tougher than in your average run, as booze now decreases your max hp and enemies can reach ridiculous amounts of health. It's these kind of things that make you say: "only in a daily". Not only that, but there are many events to happen, there are items you can bring back and use in the base vanilla, and seeing how the devs saw this as a fun and exciting experience, you can even practice them from the main menu at any time! Heck, if you don't like the campaign, I recommend this solely for the dailies! Are just so damn fun!
  
  tl;dr WASTED is truly, if not one of my favorite games of all time, one of my favorite games of the year and one of the greatest rogue-likes to be released! A unique blend of Fallout role-playing and Borderlands art and humour mixed with a trusty procedural-generated playground makes this a whortwhile experience for anyone interested for an unique world filled of drunkards with guns, mutants, katanas and what-not. I purchased this game at a -25% discount and I regret not buying this at full price, as it deserves each and every penny for every second I spent playing it. Highly recommended purchase at any time, and if you do end up enjoying it, please, make sure to share this game with your friends, as it deserves more popularity and recognition than it currently has, which for most indie game that is how the cookie crumbles, but I really do not want to see this one turn up like that. Thanks for the understanding in advance.
  
  As for you Mr. Arthur Podunkian, I said this and I'll say it again: hats off to you, you beautiful b@stard.
  And for you, the reader: this has been your random reviewer on the internet, signing off!

WASTED is a rogue-like FPS RPG that has the look of a Borderlands game but the gameplay and feel of what the Fallout games will be like if Bethesda keeps simplifying them. With that said, It all clicks together nicely. There is a well made game in all this.

This game has a game mechanic that will make you want to rush through. If you stay on a floor too long (feels like 2-3 minutes), a Purifier (otherwise known as the S.O.B. or Hunter) will slowly hunt you down and try to kill you. There are many ways to run away or fight a Purifier but if you're looking for a game that lets you take your time and explore for all the goodies, this ain't it. If this doesn't bother you, read on.

You create a character and make your way down through "Coolers", which are essentially what Vaults are to the Fallout games. Each floor is randomized and the loot gets better as you go deeper. There's equipment that raises skills such as sneaking, melee power and all that other good stuff, a nice variety of skills and traits. There's also random flasks of booze you can find that will add a random effect (called BUZZ), good or bad, to your run. After exploring a few floors you'll come across a checkpoint that lets you drink special bottles of booze that will make you pass out and return home. You can stash whatever gear you've found for future runs and for your next character, should you die. The checkpoint booze also gives you a hangover (like BUZZ) that will carry over into your next run. There is a huge variety of weapons & armor to equip and there's even a crafting system to craft better weapons & armors if you're good enough to bring the right materials back home or lucky enough to send them home via courier box. If you die, you lose everything your character is carrying at the time.

Sadly, the Purifier was a game breaker for me and it's not a game mechanic I wanted to deal with at all. Some minor nitpicks I have is gun accuracy isn't based on player skill and the knockback in this game is too floaty. Those are my main gripes. This game isn't for people who like to take their time. I got a refund for the game so giving it a positive recommendation would be disingenuous at best. But if all the stuff I complained about doesn't bug you, then by all means get this game.

Edit: fixed some typos

Short version
Buy this game if you like
-Roguelites
-addictive gameplay
-looting and crafting
-excent sounds and music
-humor
-Dying horrible to keep going till you win
-A lovely devolper who is active in the forums

Don't buy this game if you don't like
-being rushed by a time limit of a killiable but tough enemy who slowly hunts you down, to pressure you to hurry to the exit
-Repetive gameplay
-post apocalyptic Booze
-dying horribly

(Long Rant version)
Wasted isn't a wine to be savored and spat out
its ment to be pounded down, enjoying the flavor and the burn, oh the burn, then getting really hung over and then chasing that hangover with another Drink, while i wouldn't call it a cheap Beer, the substance and complexity of the game makes quite an addictive experaince.
Two things to mention First off the Brand of Humor of which Mr. Podunkian has distilled for this game, is so refreshing, it has references and nods to Pop culture without resorting to Meme culture and some what pokes fun at average gaming conventions, such as Customizing your character. which for some of us takes a while, then inevitability death and having to play as Random Wastelanders (you do get a late upgrade to your persistant home to customise), or the lovely Asuka (which I won't spoil) or Himself as a big part of Forums, Second is what this game isn't this is not like fallout or boarderlands, where getting attach to your character or the story matters , I wouldn't call this methodical game of thinking and looting and carefully planning things out.its more of thinking on your toes, knowing to take a risk or not, to fevor pressing forward while being careful
This game is a rogue Lite, as comparable to a FPS Splunky or Binding of issac , or tower of guns and ziggurat, but not quite, the standard gameplay loop, is heading into the dungeon like cooliers, watching out for the many things that hurt you, such as jumping on glass, Running into a brick, stepping in toxic puddles, watching out for gun traps,trying to sneak up or catch the many other booz'ohs trying to gun or beat you down off guard, or let them battle each other, carrying what you absolutly need as your space of carrying items is quite limited, unless you find rad fanny packs, while you have a chance of finding Random flasks to give you perks for that coolier, its a big risk of what you get from making your shoot very high to half life-ing your health, finding the booze that ends the current run and carries your next run with special perks, but the top floor booze is not always something great, and encourages you to go deeper to find better booze with better perks, as you get better loot , while balancing, eating, which slows you down, unless you take poop pills, while taking any kinda of medication doesn't let you take more than one for quite a while, Mean while you can't just keep popping pills and wait while it safe because the Fun police aka the S.O.B. sends a lone Purifier to each floor , heavly armed and equip to taking out everything in his path to get you, abit very very slowly, the closer he is, the the music changes to que you in how close and they always let you know when "something is hunting you", which sometimes makes you regret going through Locked doors with better loot and harder enemies as they always have dead ends, so there is the whole risk and reward as the goal is to get to the end floors, not to get the best loot, tho that does help getting to there. there is a way to pass items a very few amount of them to save for your next character or deposting TP (Money) in your home, to make your odds better
Conclusion
There is so much other content that Honestly running my mouth would take so much longer, I urge you to try this game if your a fan of Rougelite FPS games, the mechanics that Mr. Podunkian has made, makes alot of sense and go around his game. there is alot of debate of what should be optional in terms of having to be rushed by the SOB Mechanic , but I think desipite the argument of Options vs gameplay philophy , he should stick with the later, as this isn't making money or opening to the game to public more, This is the game he made for himself for this niche, it might not be for everyone and thats okay, but to the niche group that likes this stuff, its a Blast.
Stay thirsty Wasters

This game is amazing. It's a roguelike where you can actually make a lot of progression, even if you die.

First off it's a first-person-shooter that takes after Fallout and Borderlands. There's a humorous tone to the game, but don't let the visual fool you: it's brutal. Your character is on a quest to get to the end of the dungeons, called "coolers," and drink "booze." A "booze" is a buff (or a debuff, in some cases) that, once drunk, ejects the player from the dungeon with their inventory to their home, allowing them to restart the dungeon from the beginning. Boozes are modifiers for your character that persist until death that add modifiers like increased inventory space, increased ammo capacity or even increased damage when killing enemies in a chain. Along with this, players equip armor, weapons and bags to improve their utility. Upon death, you lose everything and get a new wasterel that stumbles upon a common sight: your abode.

So, in being a roguelike, death is final. However, your homestead is infinite. The homestead of the player character is something of a progression hub for your gameplay. It acts as a giant storage chest for the characters that end up owning the building. As you go further into the dungeons, you'll unlock new functions for your homestead. Regardless, building up a cache of weapons and equipment every time you egress is a cornerstone of the game. It's an interesting system, in both mechanics and story. You still might lose a powerful character, but your new explorers will benefit from the fruits of your last generation's labors.

The game is randomly generated, so dungeon layouts tend to be varied in a limited way (tilesets, etc). Your character will have to make their way using stealth, melee and ranged attacks, and some RPG-lite lock-picking. There's a ton of loot, and there's plenty of had choices to make in the game, such as taking unknown "buzz" buff/debuffs, or if drinking a "booze" bonus is appropriate.

This game is both excellent and genuinely funny. All "downsides" I could list are purely preferential issues and some minor nitpicks over animations. The gameplay is solid, and I've found myself coming back for more consistently. An excellent roguelike for the increasingly eclectic rougelike collection.

Purifier mechanic forces the player to run from level to level without alowing time to enjoy the game world, or make any kind of informed decisions about how to progress. the purifier creates an artificial difficulty wall for low level charicters and punishes players for trying to enjoy the games many interesting system mechanics and locations. there is an unusualy hostile reaction in the game's comunity to this opinion, and feedback to the developer has resulted in numerous "git gud" posts. Difficulty in games is great, when it is built around a learning curve and serves a purpose. the difficulty in this game comes from its randomness, and refusal to let the player choose any alternate playstyle than: run and avoid everything possible to get to the exit. despite my love of the gameworld, the art style, and game mechanics (with one obvious exeption) I have chosen to uninstall and abandon this game.