Chenso Club

Chenso Club is a 2D roguelite action game from Pixadome that puts you in control of a roster of colorful alien women, each armed with oversized weapons and a very particular gimmick: you sacrifice your own HP to unleash your most powerful moves, and you replenish that health by killing enemies and absorbing their life force. It is a push-your-luck loop at its core, and when it clicks, it genuinely feels clever. You are always one bad decision away from a run-ending mistake, and that tension is the main event. The playable characters each carry a distinct weapon type and playstyle. Blue swings a giant chomping chainsaw, Pink leans on a massive hammer, and so on through the roster. The differences are real enough that swapping characters between runs changes how you approach rooms, even if the gap between them is not as wide as you might hope. Stage layouts are procedurally generated, enemies come in predictable archetypes, and boss encounters serve as genuine checkpoints that test whether you have been playing smartly or just recklessly burning health. The pixel art is punchy and expressive, with a Saturday-morning-cartoon energy that suits the absurdity of the concept. Where the game starts to show its limits is in run variety. After a handful of hours, the upgrade pool and enemy patterns become familiar enough that the roguelite framing loses some of its punch. There is a solid foundation here, but the content feels thin for anyone who wants the genre's long-tail replayability. The soundtrack is energetic and suits the pace, though it does not linger the way a truly memorable indie score does. One or two tracks will stick, but most fade into background noise after extended play. The mixed reception on Steam reflects a game that is genuinely fun for a session or two but struggles to hold attention past the initial novelty. If you are the kind of player who loves a compact roguelite you can pick up, run through twice, and put down satisfied, Chenso Club delivers that. If you want the obsessive depth of something like Dead Cells or Hades, you will hit the ceiling quickly and feel the absence of content weight. The difficulty curve is also uneven in places, with some runs feeling like a smooth escalation and others collapsing unpredictably due to unlucky item rolls rather than player error. As someone who genuinely roots for small teams making games with clear artistic intention, I find Chenso Club easy to appreciate and a little hard to fully champion. The concept is sharp, the art direction commits to its bit, and the HP-as-resource mechanic is a real idea, not a gimmick. It just needed more time in the oven to flesh out the run variety and tighten the difficulty consistency. Worth trying if the visual style speaks to you and you go in with realistic expectations about scope. Kai, Scout Team