Mega City Force

I went into Mega City Force half-expecting it to be a shallow nostalgia box - pixel art draped over thin mechanics, riding a synth playlist into mediocrity. It is not that. What Undreamed Games, a one-developer studio out of Amsterdam, has built here is a tightly wound top-down action roguelike that wears its RoboCop and Judge Dredd inspirations openly and earns them through feel rather than just aesthetic. The moment-to-moment loop is essentially Nuclear Throne's spiritual cousin: procedurally generated rooms packed with heavily armed criminals, weapon crates scattered across the floor, and a health bar that will humble you fast. Starting health sits around 20, enemies can chunk 5 off in a single hit, and bosses can land 12 in one blow - so aggressive positioning and short bursts of focused fire matter far more than tanking through. Between levels you spend criminal-drop money at the shop on cybernetic upgrades (bionic legs for speed, armor plates, and more) and special contracts that feed a secondary economy across runs. The loop is lean and purposeful, which is exactly what this genre needs. Agent selection is where the game finds its personality. The Cyborg carries three weapon slots, improved armor, and a magnetic pulse that stuns groups - slow and devastating. The Rookie leans on a tactical dodge and a stun grenade, rewarding positional play over raw firepower. The Scout goes invisible via optical camouflage and uses a laser sight for critical-hit windows, making her feel closer to a stealth character inside an action game. Each archetype genuinely changes how you read the rooms you enter. The Tunnels under Japantown, a dark subway level with a tight vision radius and irradiated mutants, will punish a Rookie build that hasn't respected the light - the level design is thoughtful enough to pressure different agents in different ways. Boss kills unlock retrowave cassette tapes - tracks from Droid Bishop, Timecop1983, and others - that you can then pipe through an in-game HQ jukebox. That detail alone tells you a lot about the care put into this thing. The honest critiques are real but bounded. There is no narrative to speak of: the city is corrupt, the agents are righteous, you shoot your way through it. For a game drawing on RoboCop's DNA, the absence of any dramatic tissue is a missed opportunity. Runs are also on the shorter side; critics and players alike flagged wanting more content on their first clear. A minority of users reported persistent launch issues (blank screen on startup) that have apparently gone unresolved for some players, which is worth knowing before you buy. The melee options, while present, read as secondary to the ranged arsenal rather than a genuine playstyle pillar. None of these are dealbreakers in the roguelike context - short runs are normal, and the post-clear unlock of a harder difficulty plus new legendary-outfit loadouts adds genuine replay hooks. Soundscape is where I'd go to bat hardest for this game. The retrowave licensed tracks are not wallpaper - they are commissioned, thematically coherent, and the cassette-unlock mechanic makes acquiring them feel like in-world progression. For a solo dev debut, the audio production is striking. Steam user sentiment sits mostly positive and the Metacritic score of 82 reflects a game that critics found genuinely enjoyable with clearly stated limits. If you have a friend nearby, the local co-op mode adds a second agent and unlocks exclusive skins for beating the game together, which is a nice bonus for couch sessions.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Mega City Force.