RoguedexPart 2 (May 2024) · #6 of 7 in that tierWatch the moment (0:49:29)
Cursorblade is a bullet hell game where you play as the cursor, fighting your way through waves of enemies. Combine weapons and items to become more powerful with your own unique builds. Slash, dodge, upgrade, and repeat!
Consensus
C65.3/100
Steam players85.2% positiveVery Positive1,045 reviews
VG Insights estimate ↗≈31.4K copies · ≈$116K gross
What creators say
What players say
A cheap Windows-only arcade bullet-hell roguelite by solo-ish studio RealPeach in which you are the mouse cursor, slashing waves of cute enemies and picking weapons and passives between waves.
Steam players rate it Very Positive (about 85% of roughly 1,045 reviews) and treat it as a short, satisfying, cheap ($4.99) arcade score-chase with an original mouse-only hook. The most common complaint, even in positive reviews, is thin content: few weapons, enemies and upgrades, one boss, one map, and most people see everything in 1-3 hours. There are no professional critic reviews; Metacritic shows no critic score and too few user ratings for a score. Content additions since the demo appear minimal and a Steam discussion thread raises worries about the project being abandoned.
Players love
- Novel concept: the mouse cursor is both character and weapon, with one-to-one mouse-only control that players say they have rarely seen in a bullet hell
- Fluid, responsive, fair arcade feel; difficulty is described as challenging but fair by many, and as a good nice timekiller or relaxing pause
- Wave structure with a choice of one of three random weapons after each wave and a passive every few waves, giving simple survivors-like build decisions
- Cute art and animation (goofy-eyed monster sprites) and satisfying sound and visual effects
- Very cheap, short, easy to pick up and addictive for quick runs; some players lost track of time
- Achievement hunting and the wave-50 boss give a clear goal; some players pushed to wave 57 and beyond chasing high scores
Common complaints
- Very little content: roughly 6 weapons, about 12 upgrades, fewer than 10 enemy types, one map and a single boss at wave 50, after which waves continue endlessly with the same enemies
- Builds feel bland and a handful of options dominate, so runs feel identical; many upgrades are just 'X appears more often'
- Almost no meta progression: currency only unlocks new swords/cursors, so there is little reason to keep playing after unlocking everything (several say you have seen it all by the third game)
- Late waves become cluttered, so skilled dodging matters less and play turns into slowly picking off stragglers
- Looping, short and generic music gets grating; a few players mute it, though others praise the soundtrack
- Technical bareness: no Steam Cloud saves, essentially no graphics options (no resolution or FPS cap), some reports of bugs and slowness
- Some unlockable cursors/characters are seen as weak or useless, and right-click abilities have a slight activation delay that makes them unappealing
- Shallow, barebones feel: several negative reviews call it unfinished and Flash-game-like, with no saving and little build diversity
Can feel tedious
- Content exhausted within 30 minutes to 3 hours, making repeat runs feel padded and monotonous
- Some players say runs feel like chore-like work, one comparing it to cleaning windows
- Reliance on RNG weapon offers to carry runs
- Difficulty spikes: a minority find it too hard from the start, and demo players say it gets annoying past wave 10
- Endless post-boss waves repeat the same enemies with nothing new
- Looping music and lack of settings options
What's unique
- You play literally as a mouse cursor, using mouse motion alone to move, attack and dodge
- Bullet hell blended with survivors-like level-up choices but with no persistent stat meta-progression, closer to an endless arcade high-score chase
- Cursor-themed characters/blades each with a right-click active ability
- Combo meter and score-driven unlock points, where raising wave difficulty earns unlocks faster than perfecting combos
- Tiny runs and a playable free demo on itch.io (v0.27f), making it a pick-up-and-play desktop toy
Players want
- More weapons, items, enemy types, bosses, maps and characters; players note little has been added since the demo
- Real meta progression or build-diversity systems (and a save feature) so unlocks matter beyond new swords
- Make cursor-specific active abilities more useful and responsive
- Options: FPS unlock, resolution/graphics settings, Steam Cloud, and more music tracks
- Modding or Steam Workshop support (repeatedly requested in Steam discussions), plus community translations
- Clearer developer communication about the project's future and fixes for balance issues such as a blade bypassing invincibility frames and concern about the round-80 boss
Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.
Steam tags
Action RoguelikeBullet HellArcadeHack and SlashRogue-liteRogue-like2DCuteTop-DownRelaxing
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Tier list Part 2 (2024)
Cursorblade is a cute, very simple top-down bullet-hell-ish game where your cursor is both hitbox and weapon; you damage enemies by touching them and dodge by not getting hit. He finds it satisfying and charming but basic, with a game-jam feel. Upgrades arrive once per wave but barely change how you play. He places it in C tier while stressing it is not a bad game, just not something he would replay.
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