OTXO scratches a roguelite itch I've been wishing to scratch for quite some time. Its difficult top-down gameplay is made mildly less punishing by a slow-mo Focus mode, selection of guns, and wide variety of ability upgrades. Each attempt at playing Otxo feels unique, addicting, and fun, and I can confidently say that no two runs were predictable. Despite the lack of permanent upgrades, inconsistent storytelling, and some visual busyness when enemy density is at its greatest, OTXO is an absolute treat for those looking for precise gameplay in a roguelite experience. And it has a fantastic soundtrack, to boot. If you're wanting a new roguelite for your Steam library, look no further than OTXO; you won't regret it.
It’s very rare to find a visually striking roguelite that checks off the boxes of tight gameplay, high replayability, challenging yet rewarding, and a thrilling story. Often, I see roguelites lean heavily into one of these values, or sometimes two, in order to stand out from the pack. Difficulty spikes are often a result of luck (or lack thereof) and requiring more precision than normal. Over the past few years, we’ve seen several roguelites bring refreshing updates to the table, like RETURNAL‘s storytelling, Hades‘ highly-variable combat, Have a Nice Death‘s arsenal of weapons, and so much more. Now, imagine if a roguelite blended with the likes of Hotline Miami‘s twin-shooting, close combat, and brutality. That’s OTXO, and it’s out today on Steam.
I’ve spent the past few days playing OTXO on my PC, and it’s been nothing short of an addictingly fun experience. The game was incredibly replayable to the point of me losing track of time because I would get sucked into the roguelite gameplay loop. I kept thinking that I’d get just a bit farther if I did one more run, and suddenly it was two in the morning. I would unlock new content and immediately want to try it out. OTXO checks off the boxes of tight gameplay, high replayability, challenging yet rewarding, and partially checks off the box of thrilling story. Here’s why:
Pronounced “oc-cho,” OTXO is a top-down shooter roguelite that heavily leans into violence, film noir, and grit. As the nameless protagonist and Otxo, you find yourself trapped in a near-inescapable mansion full of your inner demons and mysterious allies. Enemies are heavily armed, patrolling the mansion’s halls and shooting at anything that moves. In order to win, you must kill or be killed, roll out of the way of oncoming bullets, and use the mansion’s environment to your advantage before you inevitably perish.
Much of OTXO‘s gameplay loop involves players controlling the Otxo and navigating a mansion full of deadly gun-wielding persons in suits (as well as other enemies). Killing an enemy results in them dropping their gun, letting you toss your current gun aside in favor of something that better suits your playstyle. Since guns have a limited magazine, players are encouraged to constantly toss their current weapon aside and pick up something new in order to preserve ammunition. Being forced to swap weapons on a regular basis meant that I had to be on my toes at all times, but it also led me to avoid reloading my guns because of how long the animations would take as well as only being able to reload when the magazines were fully empty. I would prefer it if I could reload my guns regardless of how many bullets were left in their magazine, but that’s okay! Just keep swapping…just keep shooting…
Throughout this review, I’m going to mention Enter the Gungeon quite a bit. This isn’t because OTXO is a carbon copy of another game like Gungeon, not at all. OTXO takes everything that Gungeon does right and packages it into a gritty package. Twin-stick shooting. Top-down gameplay. Precision. Guns, guns, guns. Dying over, over, and over again. Dodging/rolling through bullets. For those familiar with Gungeon, you’ll find yourself settling into a groove right quick. If you’re not familiar, no worries; you’ll settle in just fine.
One of the key differences between OTXO and other roguelites is its use of the Focus ability. At any time, my Otxo could slow down time and dodge away from clearly telegraphed bullets and enemies’ line of fire. This let me easily walk away unscathed despite being up against multiple enemies in a single room. This Focus ability is quite a lot of fun because of how it makes dodging bullet patterns and weaving through enemies an absolute breeze. This ability can only be used for so long, though, so I was forced with making strategic decisions on how much (or little) to use my Focus before I was forced to wait for it to recharge.
As it stands, the number of guns present in OTXO, as well as those waiting to be unlocked, offer players a mild variety of playstyles to select when making their way through the mansion. While these guns are less wild and creative than you would see from Enter the Gungeon, I felt that I had enough to select from ranging from super-precise to spraying-and-praying. I found myself graviating toward using SMGs because of their larger magazines and rapid fire rate, but sometimes I would change it up by picking up shotguns to breach a smaller room packed with enemies. Once I unlocked more guns, I felt like I was playing a more difficult and varied game since enemies had these guns at their disposal, but I wished for just a bit more variance and creativity on the gun front. Even more, having a codex and/or a means of visually classifying each type of gun into their respective classes (e.g., SMG, shotgun, pistols, etc.). Adding such a resource would make it easier for players to seek out weapons that naturally mesh with the Otxo’s abilities, obtained from the Bartender in the mansion.
A good roguelite will introduce several levels of variance that give players a unique playthrough each time they decide to play. In RETURNAL, variance includes how you come across guns, pickups, health packs (or lack thereof), and levels. For Hades, variance is present in how Zagreus selects boons (buffs/abilities) and some level layouts. For the case of OTXO, much of the variance surrounds the bartender in the Rose Room (Infinite Foyer) of the mansion. At the start of each run, the Bartender is gracious enough to let the Otxo select from one of three drinks (for the low price of FREE!). Each drink in the bar grants the Otxo a unique ability, like having Roxie the dog tag along and maul enemies, giving the Otxo invisibility while rolling, and providing the Otxo with a rechargable shield that can absorb exactly one bullet every few seconds. The Rose Room would sometimes be waiting for me in the middle of a run, too, increasing my power and giving me access to skills to assist in my murder spree. There are so many abilities available right from the start, and despite the Bartender giving me a selection of just three abilities at a time when I visited the Rose Room, each run felt unique with what was presented to me.
The bartender’s supply of bottled abilities can also grow. A mysterious lady in the Rose Room can take your spare change in the middle of a run and put it toward one of three abilities that, once unlocked, are added to the bartender’s pool. Once you’ve purchased the ability from the mysterious woman, you get its power for your current run, too. In my earlier runs, I sometimes opted to spend my loose change in hopes that I could unlock the ability in a future run without having to spend a lump sum; in doing so, I found myself getting further into the mansion because I collecting so many abilities in a single run. Having the option of buying something from the bartender or invest in permanently unlocking an ability in a future run gave my character purpose. I always had a way of making myself temporarily stronger in any given run.
Every so often, my Otxo found themself in a hazy room with a journal and a gachapon (toy capsule) vending machine. The journal would give me a brief first-hand account of someone telling their story of being trapped in the mansion. If I had 250 coins to spare, I could use the vending machine. Sometimes, the vending machine would pop out a trinket. Othertimes, I would unlock a new gun that enemies could end up using against me and for me to loot from their bodies as I progressed further into the mansion. Unlike the Rose Room/Infinite Foyer, I’d happen upon these hazy rooms on an inconsistent basis. Some runs I wouldn’t see a single one; others, I would find one in the middle of the first biome.
If you’ve been following thus far, it should be clear that most of OTXO‘s in-game variance lends toward a great and addicting roguelite experience. Some roguelites struggle in how they balance the strength of your character’s upgrades, and OTXO doesn’t really have that problem. I never once felt like things were stale when I visited the Bartender, nor did I feel like any single ability was game-breakingly powerful. Sure, a combination of abilities made some rooms feel like a piece of cake, but the chances of me consistently Of course, the single source of permanent progression in the form of the bartender’s assistant was icing on the cake. Each new ability unlocked meant one more option in the pool of possible opportunities. My only critique of this setup is the lack of other permanent upgrades, be it something small (like a small boost in movement speed) to something big (like a free revive).
I mention this critique because of how roguelites’ progression is often forgotten when the player is subjected to dying over, over, and over again. Every time I died, I was given the option of spawning on the beach or back in the Infinite Foyer to start a run. At first, I opted to the beach so I could explore the mansion and talk to the NPCs, but the NPCs were so few and far between and gave me so little feedback that I felt that I wasn’t missing much if I just jumped into a new run. I was hoping that someone would mention me dying to one of the bosses, or making a goofy mistake when rolling into the jaws of a gecko; but alas, everyone was lost, hopeless, reminding me to get back in there and escape the mansion. By opting to respawn in the Infinite Foyer, I became less invested in any story of my Otxo and the mansion proper and forgetting the world around me. Instead, I focused my energies on one purpose: Escaping. After several hours of playing, I had become an Otxo, trapped in a gameplay loop.
Perhaps this masking of OTXO‘s narrative progression is by design. Much of the story is told through drips and drops when you’re lucky to encounter a room with a journal. Finding trinkets is fun at first, but I never felt a reason to revisit what I had, or hadn’t, unlocked. Why were these trinkets in the game to begin with? What do they have to do with my Otxo, if at all? I kept hoping that something would happen when I unlocked more of the collection, but…alas. Very little. As a result of this light storytelling, sometimes it felt like I wasn’t making progression in-game. Sure, I was getting farther in the mansion, but was anything else happening in this mysterious world? I couldn’t say.
OTXO is quite the difficult roguelite, up there with the likes of Enter the Gungeon and RETURNAL. Roguelites often have difficulty peaks of varying heights. For instance, I’ve often argued that RETURNAL‘s first biome and boss are more difficult than the second and third biomes/bosses, placing the difficulty mountain right at the start of the game to give players a sense of progression by making midgame content feel easier. For OTXO, the first biome is easy, but getting to the steamroom biome (you’ll know it when you get there — no spoilers) causes a steep difficulty spike to emerge. Of course, this is assuming that the player masters timing, enemy patterns, gun patterns, and Focus, too. I found that once I got a hang of utilizing my Otxo’s Focus, things got consistently easier.
OTXO‘s difficulty should excite you rather than leave you concerned of playing a roguelite that is too hard. When reading player accounts of other roguelites, I’ve seen concerns expressed about never getting to the ending because of some worlds being too difficult. The Otxo’s Focus is a delightful ability that can turn what would be a messy shootout into a quick and pain-free affair for your Otxo, and mastering the process of activating, deactivating, and rationing it out will make for a successful and seriously fun roguelite experience. Do I think that any other levers should be added to make this roguelite experience less punishing? Possibly not; adding something like Have a Nice Death‘s “Self-Fulfillment” easy mode may make the preferred gameplay experience less precise and may also cause players to rely too heavily on Focus. In its current state, OTXO is the right kind of difficult, and it’s difficult yet fun enough to leave me begging for one more run. Just one more run. Please.
Visually speaking, OTXO leans heavily into utilizing red accents amongst a black and white pixelated dreamscape. Enemies have a distinct red dot and markings as well as a red preview line that tells you where they’re aiming. Killing an enemy throws their body like a ragdoll across the mansion’s halls and leaves streaks, splatters, and pools of blood in their wake. This gives OTXO a visually striking experience where it’s usually easy to see an enemy in another room or where an enemy with a sniper rifle may be pointing their gun. That is, until the later levels where enemy density heavily increases and multiple overlapping pools of red blood and black bodies can obscure guns lying about, as well as other enemies. In other words, it’s possible for the trichromatic color scheme to create a “busy” visual experience. This is not to say that OTXO shouldn’t have relied on its color scheme to its current extent, but to flag that readability becomes an issue in later levels.
Other than the occasional busyness, OTXO‘s visual grittiness and trichromatic color scheme set it apart from other similar roguelites in most of the right ways. It successfully leans into a never-ending film noir of violence, existentialism, and mystery one may see in an older movie or a James Bond sequence. That, combined with the top-down perspective of running and gunning, offers players an experience to literally paint the town red while trying to escape from a Groundhog Day-esque mansion from hell. I dig it.
If you’re considering playing on a controller, I’ll just go ahead and make that recommendation now. Just do it. OTXO plays quite nicely with controllers as well as mouse/keyboard, but playing using my DualSense was a much more immersive experience. Every bullet I shot vibrated my controller and added an additional touch of immersion, and it felt really good. I wasn’t expecting much controller support, if at all, but man, I’m so glad controller users like me were given some love.
I will conclude this review by praising OTXO‘s soundtrack. It is my understanding that OTXO‘s developer, Lateralis Heavy Industries, created the entire soundtrack himself. I must say: It’s an incredible listening experience that blends mid-tempo electronic dance music with industrial techo and synthwave. Throughout my review period, I felt like there were influences of Gesaffelstein and Irving Force bleeding through my headset, and it felt entirely appropriate with shooting wave after wave of enemies. I could see myself listening to the soundtrack as I do chores around the house, too. I hope that this soundtrack becomes available elsewhere, as it’s just as addicting as OTXO‘s gameplay loop. Bravo, Lateralis, for making such a banger soundtrack!
OTXO scratches a roguelite itch I’ve been wishing to scratch for quite some time. Its difficult top-down gameplay is made mildly less punishing by a slow-mo Focus mode, selection of guns, and wide variety of ability upgrades. Each attempt at playing Otxo feels unique, addicting, and fun, and I can confidently say that no two runs were predictable. Despite the lack of permanent upgrades, inconsistent storytelling, and some visual busyness when enemy density is at its greatest, OTXO is an absolute treat for those looking for precise gameplay in a roguelite experience. And it has a fantastic soundtrack, to boot. If you’re wanting a new roguelite for your Steam library, look no further than OTXO; you won’t regret it.
A review copy of OTXO was provided by the publishers or the purpose of thie DigitalChumps review.
