TL:DR; this game is a Norse themed Vampire Survivor with Diablo graphics and a slight spin in format. Heavy recommend.

This game is a BLAST and I HIGHLY recommend jumping in, especially because it's in early access (and at a discounted price right now) and I just see so much potential for development.

Gameplay is pretty straight forward and what you'd expect for this type of game, small enemies first and they build in size and number as time passes.

4 playable characters (2 to start, and 2 locked under achievements) and each character has 3 weapons (1 to start and 2 locked under achievements). Each character feels very different and have a bunch of unique skill upgrades to choose from during the run. A nice variety for now, but will definitely look forward to more options as development continues!

Each character also has a skill tree to develop as you gain Skill Points. The most interesting thing I found with the skill tree is that you can reset and re-spec the skill tree at any time with any character at no cost, and you can transfer the points to other characters as well. So, if I play the Berserker one run and then want to switch to the Revenant or Seeress the next run, I can pull points from the Berserker and add them to the character I want to play. You can also spend skill points upgrading the God Skill powers that act as buffs during your run, and again, those can also be reset and redistributed as you see fit for the build you want to run. Very flexible and user friendly Skill Points system, but those points do get exponentially harder to earn as you play the game.

Speaking of user friendly, the game gives you options on how you'd like to play the game control wise. You start with a main and secondary attack, and then get powers and skills from the upgrades during the run. Each of these have cooldowns, and there's definitely strategy in how/when you use the attacks. In the settings, you can choose between the main attacks and the power ups to be manual or auto. I chose to manually activate the main/secondary attacks and allowed the power ups to be autocast. I'll probably tweak it a bit in the future just to see where I'm most comfortable, but that setting felt great.

I was able to play the first and second stages and each are very unique and have their own sets of challenges, I am excited to unlock and experience more of them as there are a few I haven't gotten to yet.

I love the format for stage progression. The level starts out with the survival timer, and then shortly after beginning, you are given a series of quests to be completed. Once the quests are done, the mini map marks a spot to reach that triggers the boss fight. Once the boss fight is activated, the survival timer disappears and the only condition to win is to defeat the boss. I really dig this format because the quest completions feel tense because of the timer, and then the stress of the timer goes away, but big boss fight energy begins, and defeating the boss to get the level completion is super satisfying.

The only criticisms I might have come from a few balance issues in the powers and skills. I found a couple REALLY powerful upgrades, and a few that just didn't seem to be effective. This led to me leaning on a couple of them as a crutch for a "good build" instead of exploring and experimenting with other options. I have a feeling these things will be ironed out as development continues. I also would love more character and weapon choices, but again, early access, so I'm not being too critical there, especially because they all feel very unique already, and adding more might cloud that to a degree.

Bottom line: GO PLAY THIS GAME!