Metal Mutation Early Access Preview

When two genres come together, they can truly captivate their target audience. So when I saw the words “cyberpunk” and “Roguelike” put together to market Metal Mutation, I knew I had to get my hands on it. The hyper-futuristic setting coupled with the intensity of a challenging playthrough instantly generated interest in me, and I’m sure I’m not alone in that sentiment. As developer T0 Studio’s first outing entered Early Access this month, is it worth checking out in its infancy?

Metal Mutation operates as an isometric Action RPG as you select your rooms while progressing through a run. Roguelike elements appear as you can select your powerups that can influence your primary attacks, buff your dodges, utilize the powers from the bosses you beat, and much more. There’s enough variety between attack types to consider different attack patterns and suit playstyles in risk-vs-reward battles that demand you attack just as much as you parry and dodge to make it to the next room.

Fighting enemies in Metal Mutation feels a bit run-of-the-mill, but it’s bolstered by the Roguelike elements that are presented. Instead of just mashing the left mouse button, the attack patterns of enemies (especially bosses) are involved enough to demand you maneuver accordingly to stay alive since you can only regenerate health in recovery rooms. You can gauge when enemies are about to attack with a visual/sound cue. However, every time you get hit, the same sound plays. A little variety there could be incorporated.

In my first run on Metal Mutation, I was able to make it to the first upgrade room by the skin of my teeth. At this point, I had enough upgrade points to invest into the succeed-beyond-death nature of Roguelikes, and invested most of the points into boosting health, crit chance, and crit damage. Further upgrades were locked behind my level, but the challenge was persistent and I felt like after I got stronger, the game scaled along with me to a modest effect. If a Roguelike ever gets too easy, I don’t think it’s doing its job right. Metal Mutation avoids that issue successfully.

My gripes with Metal Mutation are either minimal or nitpicks. I wasn’t too invested in the story because the intro of the game’s text scrolled way too fast to keep up. The lore you pick up along the way isn’t particularly innovative as it falls into cyberpunk tropes, too. Thankfully, the visuals look the part and fit in just fine. There was also an adjustment period as the arrow in front of the protagonist doesn’t indicate the direction of attack. He’ll swing in the direction your mouse/controller is aimed instead. Once you get used to that though, the game is more than playable.

I think Metal Mutation has a lot of potential. Out of the gate, it’s essentially bug-free and has enough depth to get players started and upgraded for multiple runs. Some points T0 Studio could focus on are honing into an original cyberpunk premise, as well as expanding the already-decent list of upgrades at your disposal upon a room’s clearing. Otherwise, here’s hoping this gets into the hands of more Cyberpunk and Roguelike fans from here on out.

A PC Preview Copy of Metal Mutation was provided by Microids for this preview.