Loot River devs "messed up" but will work to improve game, add actual loot

rockpapershotgun.com:

Loot River, the pixely roguelike with a bit of Souls and a bit of Tetris, is all about making multiple attempts to navigate weird dungeons made of moving platforms, before dying and starting again. It's one of those games that's perfect for Game Pass, at least in its current form, but that's going to be changing in a small bit, according to a post devs Straka Studio made yesterday. Straka note they are a small team who playtested with a very small group, and didn't realise the game would be unwelcoming to newcomers. In fact, they've already made some smaller tweaks to the game that have made quite a difference, but the most notable problem players raised was the lack of any, umm, loot?

When Loot River was first revealed last year, we all went "oooh that's such a cool idea!" at the announcement trailer. And it is! I've been playing it since it came out last week, and you swish around flooded dungeons on tetronimo-shaped pontoons that you control independently of your little warrior. This means that you can kite enemies away from the chest you want to open, or lure them into little traps where you leave them stuck on an island. There are traps that start fires, and can set half a level ablaze if you don't cut off its route by moving a float.

This is all great stuff, because it makes you feel very clever and somehow more adventurous than the average warrior in your normal kind of roguelike. That guy just walks along straight paths and up regular stairs like some kind of dungeon-traversal loser, so easily cucked by architecture.

There are a lot of things to like about Loot River. You come up against a number of enemies - annoying shadows, bipedal lumps of bubblegum that throw explosives, big chonks with hammers and even