Blazing Beaks

I came into Blazing Beaks expecting another clone-of-a-clone in the post-Gungeon roguelite pile, and the first hour almost confirmed that suspicion. Rooms clear, door opens, next room, repeat. Then I picked up my third artifact in one run and the whole thing clicked. The game's central hook is not the guns or the characters, it is the artifact greed system: you carry negative debuffs through a level in exchange for cashing them in at the shop for powerful items. Reduced weapon damage, can't pick up coins for a full level, no heart drops until you reach the counter. You decide how much pain you will absorb for the payoff. That single decision loop is genuinely well-designed and separates Blazing Beaks from a lot of noisier competition. On the shooting side, this is a top-down twin-stick setup with a dodge that doubles as a swappable active ability slot rather than a locked-in roll. After bosses you can trade your dodge for one of 13 other abilities, including a bubble shield against projectiles or temporary invincibility, each with different cooldowns. With 10 playable characters, each carrying a different starting weapon, HP pool, and passive perk, and over 50 guns to find or buy across the swamp, graveyard, and desert biomes, the run variety is real. Weapons range from spread-shot and freeze rounds to instant-fire options, and artifact interactions can push or tank your effective time-to-kill in ways that keep you recalculating on the fly. The bad news: no online multiplayer, at all. Story mode tops out at two players local, tournament mode caps at four local. If you were hoping to run this with a friend over netcode, look elsewhere. The tournament modes themselves (Deathmatch, One Gun, Skull Keeper, Drop Hearts, Hunting with a spear you have to retrieve after every throw) are genuinely fun in a couch-versus context, but they live and die by having bodies in the room. There's no ranked ladder, no online infrastructure worth mentioning. That is a real gap for a PC release in 2025. The soundtrack also loops too hard and too fast, and the lack of any narrative beyond "origin of evil, go shoot it" gives the story mode a hollow center. Steam sits at 83 percent positive across several hundred reviews, which tracks with my read. It is a polished, focused game that does its one clever thing well. Content depth becomes a ceiling eventually: three worlds, a linear boss sequence, and some community criticism around enemy variety thinning out past the first biome. The daily run mode and seeded runs add legs, and Workshop support means custom characters trickle in. But do not buy this expecting a deep unlock tree or a live community of randoms to queue into. For a couch co-op or local versus night with people who can handle punishing roguelite runs, Blazing Beaks earns its place. Solo, it is a tight thirty-to-fifty hour experience before you start lapping the content. Mouse and keyboard work fine given the top-down angle, though controller is the intended feel and it shows. Just do not expect any of it to work over the internet. Fred, Scout Team