Kill to Collect

I want to like this more than I do. Kill to Collect drops you into Geoshelter Alpha as a bounty hunter grinding through procedurally generated floors in a top-down isometric brawler, and for the first 30 minutes the 80s cyberpunk aesthetic and punchy synthwave soundtrack make a real first impression. Four hunters to pick from - Kate Katana swinging a sword, Ivan Ironfist throwing hands with bionic arms, Riot Ray tanking up with corpo-grade armor, and Shocking Shelly deploying turrets and electricity - sounds like solid role variety on paper. It is not that simple in practice. The combat system is more deliberate than a twin-stick shooter, which is either a feature or a flaw depending on your patience. You cannot cancel an attack animation into a dodge, and turning takes a beat longer than you want when a crowd is pressing you from multiple angles. The design intent is clear: read enemy patterns, pick your window, strike, get out. When that clicks with a coordinated squad it feels genuinely rewarding. The problem is the solo experience taxes that patience hard, and some critics flagged real character balance issues in single-player, with Kate Katana reportedly making early floors trivial while the other three hunters grind through the same rooms at a much slower pace. There are three distinct modes to work through: a Story Campaign across 13 levels with light narrative context, a Challenge Mode where you race through eight floors for leaderboard placement with both a repeatable and a one-try daily variant, and Free Hunt Mode for bounty-picking without story structure. Between floors you hit a shop area that lets you spend stamps and credits on upgrades, consumables, and projectile weapons you carry into the next room. The economy works fine. The problem is the procedural generation, which several reviewers noted feels like a small pool of pre-made rooms rotating on a loop rather than genuine randomness, which wrecks long-term replayability faster than the difficulty ever will. The bigger issue for anyone picking this up today in 2026 is the online population. Community threads from as early as 2018 were already showing empty lobbies in story mode. This game was built around co-op - the difficulty scaling in multiplayer assumes coordination, and certain items like the chain cutter are explicitly designed for two-person use. Without a crew of friends who will commit to playing it with you, you are looking at a solo run that is more grind than fun, against a difficulty curve that was never tuned for one person. Controller support exists but has had reported issues post-update, which is a problem for a game that critics noted feels designed with a gamepad in mind from the start. The 80s cyberpunk aesthetic is the most charming thing here, mixing 2D illustrations with chunky 3D models and a licensed synthwave soundtrack that genuinely fits the vibe. But the world lacks personality beyond surface dressing, and the story wraps up in still images with subtitles. If you have a standing co-op group that needs a short-session, pick-up-and-play option, there is a decent two-to-three hour run hiding in here per bounty cycle. For anyone else, the combination of thin content depth, aging online infrastructure, and the solo balance problems makes it a hard sell at full price.

Fred · Scout Team

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