Thank you Voidmaw for sending us a review code!

As you brandish a katana and pistol, a mob of zombies and twisted once-human horrors approaches, eager to turn you into an unrecognizable carcass. Little do they know, your slide into a slash will turn most of them into fleshy shrapnel. The remaining few can be quickly picked off with your pistol. In Katanaut, interactions like this are quite frequent, and happen much quicker than you might think. Aboard a space station riddled with an unforeseen zombie problem, your goal is to slice through the hordes and find the root of the issue.

When starting the game, all you can use is a katana and pistol. There are a few weapons that you can find in the first few areas, but for the most part you’re bound to that until you get some unlocks. Once you find a “blueprint” for a weapon, you can use one of the two persistent currencies to allow it to show up in your runs. This works the same for skills, which are special abilities that can be used with the triggers on a controller or Q/E on a keyboard. Because of this unlock system, it might take a few failed runs to acquire a setup that works for you.

Each run has a format of two regular levels followed by a boss, repeated a few times. After exiting each area, you are given the opportunity to upgrade your stats, replenish health, pick a perk, and other things that can help your run. In the levels, the exit is placed somewhere random, but the actual layout is mostly the same. In some spots, enemies are sparse, and in others, you can hardly see around the immense hordes of creatures. There are chests and other interactables spread around that may yield skills, weapons, or credits for upgrades.

Occasionally within a level, you will find something strange such as a mysterious portal or an NPC with something to say. Pursuing such things will often grant you short-term upgrades, yet other times they may reward you with an unlockable weapon or even a new katana. There are six katanas that you can use, but you only start with one, and the others are acquired in this fashion. They have a lot of different uses and effects, with one aiding movement, another firing projectiles, and some with charged attacks. They all are useful, though, and can be fit into setups pretty easily.

The bosses in Katanaut are all pretty unique, and it might take a few attempts to beat each one. Their attacks are generally pretty well indicated and seem pretty fair. Most can be avoided by sliding and jumping, but the variation keeps it difficult enough. Upon beating a boss, you are awarded with a persisting currency to use for permanent upgrades later on. Additionally, you get some particularly powerful unlocks from these.

After you beat the final boss and complete a run, you unlock the ability to make future runs more difficult and unique. There’s a random event on each level, and bosses have new attacks and visual effects. Their attacks do feel a little less fair, but that also could just be me being salty for not having gotten very far in a run of this difficulty.

Katanaut has a nice soundtrack, with fifteen original songs on it. They’re all very well produced and do a very good job at setting the tone for the game. Generally, it mixes synthwave and electronic sounds with cinematic orchestral music, and I think it works very well and creates a unique vibe for each level. The sound design in general, with the sound effects and ambience, is also very skillfully crafted. It synergizes with the art and graphics too, which are a little bit pixelated by themselves, but use shaders pretty well to make up for it. I didn’t find any glitches, and the game still occasionally has patches. The controls are alright, but I did notice that some seem kind of pointless. Particularly, you can aim directly up or down using the directional pad, but you can already do that without moving with the joystick. Other than that, a lot of the menus in-game such as the inventory seem a little difficult to navigate between the columns.

I personally wouldn’t recommend that younger children play this game, as it is quite violent and has a little bit of language in it. Every encounter with a group of enemies, assuming you win, results in a lot of their gore strewn all around the room and blood all over the walls. This can be turned off, however, and can also have the gore be replaced with either flowers, confetti, teddy bears, or a seasonal option. In terms of language, it is not frequently used, but when it is, it doesn’t pull punches. I do recall an instance of a character repeatedly yelling the F-word, and then never again. Other than those two issues, there are some environments in the game that appear to have some sort of blood sacrifices and tortured people.

Katanaut as a game is very well put together. It doesn’t appear that any corners were cut, and the general feel is quite clean. I feel like it can be compared in a lot of ways to Dead Cells, and there are certain aspects of Katanaut that I actually like more, namely the combat system. I love how smooth it feels to quickly slide around, slashing through every enemy that happens to be in your path. The gameplay loop is very nice, and I would certainly recommend this game to any other roguelite fans out there.