The game was provided for free from the publisher through PressEngine. Thank you!
Impaler is a small boomer-shooter roguelike that shines in its presentation and gameplay loop. You are in a single room where waves of enemies continually come at you. With one of the 6 guns you choose, you will blast away your foes and, if you need help, summon spikes to impale them. Each kill earns gold and after a wave ends with 50 or more gold in the bank, you can buy one of the 40+ upgrades to your gun or your person. All of this is coupled with a fantastic soundtrack and gorgeous retro art style visuals that only complement the game.
This isn’t going to be long since this game is quite perfect on the Steam Deck. It is 60 FPS the entire time, over 6 hours of battery, and has controller support. On top of that, going into the controller settings will allow you to easily enable gyro controls which work flawlessly.
The developer has also taken the time to add specific support to make Impaler work well on the Steam Deck. On the store page for the game, there are developer notes under the Steam Deck compatibility section that mentions the priority for the game to work on the Deck. They are shooting for Verified as soon as the game is available, as well as listing a couple other details on how Impaler was prepped to run on Deck:
- The game has simple gamepad-friendly controls
- Controls are fully remappable via the Steam Input Configurator (accessible from settings)
- The game is balanced so that it can be completed on a gamepad
- Runs at a constant 60fps with no slowdowns or stuttering
- Small download size at under 400MB
- Loads in <10 seconds
- Gracefully handles the Deck’s configurable refresh rates
Impaler is a small game and will cost only $2.99 when it releases on December 6th, but a demo is available now. It is a wonderful experience on the Steam Deck and one I found myself enjoying and continually coming back to, even with other huge games I have been waiting to play. While it is a small game, it is a clear example of how taking the Steam Deck into account for development and optimization can be so impactful. Impaler is definitely one of my favorite games I have played on the Steam Deck so far.
Screenshots:
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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