Acid Planet looks like a cross of Vampire Survivors and They Are Billions

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An upcoming blend of action roguelike and tower defense called Acid Planet will drop you on a ruined world with your weapons, your wits, and a very remarkable number of drones and automated gun turrets. Your opposition is a seemingly-endless horde of mutated monsters led by gigantic, stompy kaiju.

It's fine if you die, though: You're an expendable commercially-grown clone working for a corporate overlord.

"Acid Planet is a Strategic Wave-Defense game with elements of Action Roguelike, RTS and Horde-Survival. It's a game for people who like building, strategy, quick runs, risk-reward trade-offs and battles on an epic scale," says developer Adam Travers.

Over the course of enemy attack waves you'll build up an economy and layers of tower defenses and a swarm of personal drones in order to keep the threat away and build up capability. The goal, of course, is to take down the eventual giant kaiju that come to stomp you and retrieve something called a "kaiju core" which I can only assume is ripped from the beast's still-warm corpse.

Acid Planet has that chunky pixel style that I like to see in this genre and what at first glance is a decent variety of stuff to build: Units and weapons in the limited screenshots out now include stuff like scout drones, swords, rockets, shields, flamethrowers, barricades, ammo foundries, mine-laying towers, and explosive bomb drones.

You can find Acid Planet on Steam, where it will launch on May 7, 2024. It has an upcoming free demo due to drop on February 29, 2024. It's developed by solo indie Adam Travers.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.