AK - Xolotl Beta Review

Do you love cute things, taking care of them and um well…. Guns? Then venture on with me as we save the baby Axolotls. 

First off I want to say that this review is based off of the beta code I was given, I was playing & testing the game while it was in Beta.

This is AK - Xolotl from stolen babies, stolen food to guns and saving the food (and the babies).

About the Game: AK - Xolotl is a roguelite shooter and you start the game off as the only axolotl left after having the babies & all of your food taken from you during the night. Embark on your journey to shoot down and slaughter anything that gets in your way of saving the babies. Jump from Biome to Biome, randomly generated room to randomly generated room and collect delicious foods, power ups and items all while trying to find all of the different axolotl babies to nurture and build into your very own axolotl army.

How long have I played it: I am about 5 hours into the game and so far I can say it has absolutely kept my attention and no matter how much I wanted to get discouraged or rage or upset, I really just couldn't. It's just that adorable. The pixel-like graphics, soundtrack and game play work so well together and I take my hat off to the devs who made this game a possibility. To me this game reminds me a bit of Cult of the Lamb by Massive Monster & Vampire Survivors by Poncle in the ways that the dungeons with randomly generated rooms and taking care of your baby axolotls are almost like the dungeons in Cult of the Lamb and making sure the cultlings are taken care of. As well as the weapon varieties and levelling up is more Vampire Survivors like. 

Likes : I honestly had no idea what I was truly getting into with this game when I requested to be a beta tester but now that I have played it I’m glad I put my name in for it. It is a little sad in the way of upgrading stats due to having to steal the happiness from your baby Axolotls but taking advice from my partner helped a bit. He told me to think of it almost like Cult of the Lamb, how your followers can only hold so much faith before you have to upgrade due to not being able to hold any more. Thinking like that where as the babies can only hold so much happiness before they couldn’t anymore helped a lot for me to start upgrading my stats. The aesthetics to this game I found were very compelling, the colours, music, it just all goes together perfectly. 

The different “dungeon” floors also make for a great time as each floor is different & each environment changes as you go through the different bosses. The developer is also a wonderful person, they came into my beta stream, dropped a follow and even hung out in chat for awhile. It was definitely a surreal experience & I would love to work with them again in the future.

This game is definitely a strategic one, it took me over 5 hours of game play to even beat the first boss. That’s definitely okay with me though, I want to take my time with it and experience it slow and steady. I would say that if you enjoy games like Cult of the Lamb, Vampire Survivors, Enter the Gungeon, etc then you should most definitely enjoy AK - Xolotl.

As for those that are wondering and also a great thing, yes AK Xolotl works with a steam deck and it runs quite well for it being such a new indie game. Since launch there have also been 4 Quality of Life updates, 2 additional content updates & an extra run modifier update. This game was literally released on September 14th, 2023 and they have been keeping up to date with it. 

Since launch and the content updates I did find a lot of things different from when I beta tested. Interactions between characters, shop screens, etc that were buggy in the beginning and are now fixed & updated.

Dislikes: I did notice while playing, in the shop room that even though I had enough in-game currency the shop would not let me purchase some items. Now this doesn’t discourage me from playing the game, and I find it very hard for any of the game to discourage me because it’s so cute. Another thing was having to destroy such cute animals with ease. I am in no way complaining about it, it just makes for losing track of time very easily. Honestly though as a gamer, sometimes losing track of time is a good thing & AK - Xolotl does just that

Conclusion & Rating: In conclusion, I will say this game is an absolute gem. I love being able to hop in and disappear out of reality for a while all while saving the babies. It definitely deserves much more recognition than it’s gotten & should be on wish lists all around.

After checking out the content & bug updates I can honestly say I would rate this a 8/10

So with that: 
Halt adventurers, a baby xolotl nearby needs you. Will you accept my quest?

Check out the trailer first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xteTxUFl2xs

You can begin your adventure at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1479140/AKxolotl/

AK - Xolotl is also available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, & Nintendo Switch

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