The Superfluous

I came to The Superfluous because 'jet packs plus roguelite squad management' is a pitch I cannot ignore, and the first thirty minutes delivered exactly the chaotic, explosion-forward energy it promises. You drop a crew of specialized spacemen into procedurally generated cave sectors inside an asteroid, shoot things in two to four directions depending on your weapon, blast shortcuts through destructible terrain, and try not to lose your leveled-up squadmates to the batcreep and slime population living in the Dark Cave biome. It moves fast, the jet pack traversal feels snappy enough on a controller or keyboard, and watching a well-geared miner tear a new corridor through a wall while your heavy-weapons guy holds off a swarm has genuine pull. The roguelite loop sits in a comfortable middle ground. Individual squad members carry perma-death: lose someone in the field and they clone back at level zero, costing you the random perks they had accumulated through combat and exploration. Gear upgrades and mission progress persist across failed runs, so you are never starting from absolute zero. The push-your-luck moment at the end of each sector, where you decide to bank your gold and gems or dive one level deeper, is the game's best design decision. Gold buys new crew DNA profiles and lets you re-roll perks back at base; gems go toward squad size increases, starting health, and gear tiers. On paper the economy is tidy. In practice the research lab upgrades feel underpowered for their cost, which the developer acknowledges with a candid in-game note that upgrades are expensive and not that effective. That kind of self-aware humor runs through the whole game and is mostly charming rather than a red flag. The three biomes, Dark Cave, The Underwater, and the Lava Zone, each bring a mechanical twist. The Underwater slows all movement to simulate pressure-suit drag, which is a real change of pace. The Lava Zone adds an overheating mechanic to your EXO suit that punishes standing still, which works well with the jet pack mobility but also exposes how thin the enemy variety feels by the time you reach it. Boss fights gate each biome transition, and while they are functional, they are not memorable. The solo campaign is the main value proposition; local co-op for two players is present and works fine on a couch, and a local arena deathmatch mode exists in some form, though it felt unfinished at launch and the community around it has never been large enough to stress-test it properly. The honest assessment here is what one critic captured cleanly: the game has interesting ideas that do not feel polished or refined enough to make it stand out, and the engaging systems do not sustain interest for long. That tracks. The destructible terrain is the most immediately satisfying mechanic, the squad composition decisions have real weight early on, and the sci-fi humor keeps the tone light. But the procedural generation does not create enough variation to mask the repetitive room structures by the back half of a run, and the lack of weapon variety means your firing pattern options narrow quickly. For a sub-five-dollar game on sale, the content-to-price ratio is defensible. Treat it as a short-session couch game with a friend rather than a deep roguelite you will replay obsessively.

Fred · Scout Team

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