While I would be remiss to say that the developer put no effort into Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea, it seems that much of that effort was misplaced, and as a result, Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea is one of the most disappointing games I played in 2023.
Much of the album art used for the in-game music play is intentionally offensive and borderline satanic; from dominatrix nuns with horns and black voids for eyes to hellish skeletal beings and human faces with skin melting off, every album cover is intended to be as dark and evil as possible to the point that it almost becomes an unintentional parody.
While I understand the value of shock value (death metal bands thrive off it), going out of your way to offend religious people (which make up roughly 90% of the population of the world) is a poor marketing tactic and reeks of desperation on the part of the developer.
I once knew a young lad on a webmaster forum; he was roughly 13, and most of us there were closer to 30, so he went out of his way to cuss the most, tell the most dirty jokes, and act “manly”, it was only when he was older did he see how immature he looked by swearing multiple times per comment and acting macho and aggressive at every opportunity.
Hopefully, the developer of Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea will have a moment like that sometime in the future, but I certainly will not be holding my breath.
While the map looks decent, and the sprites are more unique than those used in many action roguelikes created by indie developers, the UI is horrifically bad, with the vast majority being near unreadable due to the font used and the developer’s instances of using orange/yellow font on a tan background.
Visual issues aside, the game is very poorly translated, with many items having names and descriptions that do not describe what they do, how they work, or what upgrading said item will accomplish; while this issue may not exist in the original Russian, in English, it is almost unreadable.
Unlike almost every other action roguelike, there is no way to progress between levels, all but destroying replayability. Then again, with how badly translated most item names are and how awful said items are, I doubt many people would want to replay Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea.
I am honestly not sure what is going on half of the time with Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea, even if you look past the odd and possibly anti-semantic setting of lizard people invading medieval Russia in an attempt to corrupt it (something Russian nationalists accuse Jewish people of), weapons appear to be a mix of random area of effect attacks, and oddly a bolt action sniper rifle, perhaps these are placeholder items, but with barely readable font poor item descriptions, your guess is as good as mine.
I love action roguelike games, but I hated Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea. It is a pretty game, to be sure. Still, there was no sense of progression; combat moved at a crawl, and weapons were mostly slow-moving area-of-effect attacks that sometimes did little to no damage while obliterating the same tier of enemies at other times.
Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea retails for just $0.99, making it one of the cheapest action roguelikes on the market. Honestly, if it was a little less awful, that alone would be enough for me to give it a passing grade. Unfortunately, that is not the case.
Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea is a action rogue-like video game developed by Ephemeral Interaction and published by Agafonoff, it was released on 16 November 2023 and retails for $0.99.
Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea is available exclusively on PC.
The following peripherals are officially supported:
Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea is unrated and contains:
If you have ever asked yourself, “How can I make a knockoff of a popular game and make it as edgy as possible without exerting any real effort in making it a good game?” then you just may be the next creator of a game like Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea. Poorly translated, overly edgy, and overwhelmingly not fun, Lizard Survivors: Battle for Hyperborea is one of the least enjoyable action roguelikes I have played this year, and for that reason, I cannot recommend it.
