Shape Shifter: Formations is an action twin-stick shooter with rogue-lite elements, where you must destroy hordes of geometric enemies alone or with a friend. Select your ship and combine a large variety of weapons, abilities and infinitely stacking upgrades to craft your own unique build.
A neon-styled survivor-like where you pilot a small ship with a single aimed weapon, a dash and a ship-specific ultimate. It was sent in by a viewer and he says he has sunk huge hours into it. He is blown away by the amount of content, build variety and level-up choice depth, calling it one of his favorite survivor-likes and a hidden gem. Main gripes are slow unlocking of build potential and uneven boss design. He hedges between S and top of A.
Liked
Absurd amount of content: roughly 20 ships, about 15 weapons, many unlocks via achievements
Level-up screens offer four choices that can be banished, skipped, rerolled, duplicated, plus a glitch system that can double an upgrade
Upgrades are mostly mechanical rather than number tweaks, with builds that synergize across corrosion, lightning, fire and more
Multiple layered progression trees (skill tree, paragon, ultimate tree) plus rare legendary upgrades with big impact
Shop fills with new mechanics as you unlock, giving lots of player choice
Chaotic, satisfying neon visuals and tight control with close dodges feeling great
Has co-op/multiplayer and strong solo play
Disliked
Takes a while to get going since you must unlock a lot to have real build potential
Number-adjustment trees (skill tree/paragon) unlock late; he wishes they came earlier
No luck stat, which he feels the game could benefit from
Some bosses are far harder than others
Some bosses have no adds, which undercuts on-kill and bounce synergies
Some balance issues here and there
Top 10 of 2025 (#9)
Shape Shifter Formations is a neon twin-stick survivor-like where you pick a ship and weapon and fight hordes of geometric shapes. He calls it an absolute hidden gem and says it surprised him after more than 50 survivor-likes this year. He stresses the diverse, interesting upgrades and the level-up manipulation tools, plus smooth gameplay and satisfying effects. He strongly recommends it to survivor-like fans and notes it has gotten little recognition. It lands at number 9 on his 2025 list.
Liked
In-game upgrades are very interesting and allow a huge amount of build diversity
Once meta progression is unlocked, players can roll, banish, lock, transmutate or dual-select upgrades, making level-ups strategic
Upgrade choices stay exciting throughout the whole late game
Gameplay is very smooth for the genre
Visual effects are amazingly satisfying
Large content: 20 ships, 20 weapons, 193 unique upgrades
Disliked
Unlocking the important meta progression can admittedly take a while
Has received very little recognition (a discoverability issue rather than a design flaw)
A Geometry Wars-style neon twin-stick shooter / bullet-heaven roguelite by Castec Studios with 20 ships, 20 weapons, a huge skill-tree meta layer and infinitely stacking in-run upgrades, playable solo or in local co-op.
Players receive it very warmly: about 91% of roughly 276 Steam reviews are positive (Very Positive), with many reviewers logging 50 to 270 hours. It left Early Access (entered Sept 2023) with a 1.0 release on May 27, 2025, followed by a run of hotfixes through 1.0.4 in late June 2025, so it is a finished game that has been actively patched. Commercially it is a small niche title: a third-party Boxleiter-style estimate puts it near $56k gross (about $16k net); no copies-sold figure was published by the source (SteamSpy range 0-20,000 owners), and one reviewer says it deserved far more success. No professional critic coverage or Metacritic/OpenCritic scores were found; Metacritic has a page but shows no critic or user score yet. Complaints cluster around opaque unlock and upgrade information, occasional performance drops at high threat levels, and a lack of online co-op.
Players love
Deep build variety: 20 ships, 20 weapons, about 800 skills in skill trees, and 200+ infinitely stacking upgrades make runs feel different
Level-up choice tools (reroll, banish, lock, transmute, dual pick, plus a tag system to promote or blacklist upgrade tags) give real control over builds, which reviewers say keeps late-run picks exciting
Strong Geometry Wars feel with clean, readable neon visuals; reviewers say they rarely got lost even in hectic moments
Satisfying meta-progression and unlock loop that gives a 'one more run' hook and starts paying off once you unlock more of the skill tree
Difficulty is seen as fair, with scaling threat levels and deaths that usually feel like build or skill problems rather than pure RNG
Good local co-op and ongoing developer support (1.0 added a final boss arena, three save profiles, and several balance/bug patches)
Flexible settings: optional auto-aim, toggle auto-fire added in 1.0.1 for accessibility, and a granular difficulty-modifier system
Runs are around 30 minutes with an endless mode, so they are easy to fit into short sessions
Common complaints
Many unlocks do not say how to get them; a reviewer could not work out how to unlock the Swarm ship because locked items do not name what unlocks them
No wiki or official Discord was noted by one negative reviewer at 1.0, which makes the opaque unlock system worse
Performance: a Steam Deck reviewer measured FPS dropping to 1-2 for seconds at threat level 25 and occasional full freezes; another positive reviewer had to change video settings to get normal performance
Save-data loss reported by at least one reviewer (51 hours lost), and the Steam forum has a pinned 1.0 saves notice and a bug about restarts forgetting tags and bans
Startup problems reported on the forum: hangs on first launch and prompts to install the .NET Framework
Some upgrade text is unclear or misleading (for example, how overkill works, and '100% reduction' not reducing a duration to zero)
Balance gaps: the stealth ship is called overpowered and long-range/auto-target weapons much easier than others; one forum thread calls Ability Duration Up bad
Can feel tedious
Slow start: one reviewer says it takes a while to get going and feels weak until you unlock skill-tree nodes
Unlock grind: a player at 12 hours had unlocked only about 25% of content and found the hidden unlock conditions annoying
Chaotic late-game screens for players using non-auto-target weapons, where dodging and max damage dominate
Performance stalls mid-run that cannot be played around because the ship is immobile or the run ends
What's unique
Tag system that lets you promote or blacklist upgrade categories in the level-up pool, which one reviewer credits with dramatically improving the roguelike element versus similar games
Unusual level-up options: reroll, banish, lock, transmute and dual select in the same run
Geometry Wars twin-stick action fused with a survivor-like/bullet-heaven upgrade structure and infinite stacking upgrades
Ship-specific and weapon-specific skill trees with around 800 skills, giving much deeper pre-run customization than typical bullet-heavens
Threat-level (heat/NG+) scaling and endless looping with rising enemy counts
Community-made UEVR mod lets you play it in VR, which a reviewer raves about
Players want
Add online co-op; reviewers note the game only has local co-op and the forum has a complaint about needing a controller in multiplayer
Explain unlock conditions and upgrade mechanics better in-game (name the item an unlock requires, tooltips for overkill, dual pick and percentage stacking), or provide a wiki
Fix performance spikes at high threat levels and Steam Deck stutters
Rebalance ships and weapons so non-stealth ships and manual-aim weapons compete, and buff weak upgrades like Ability Duration Up
Improve save reliability and preserve tags and bans when restarting a run
Add more content after 1.0 (reviewers explicitly hope for more)
Summarised from Steam reviews and community discussion.
Roguedex
Tier list Part 4 (2025)
A neon-styled survivor-like where you pilot a small ship with a single aimed weapon, a dash and a ship-specific ultimate. It was sent in by a viewer and he says he has sunk huge hours into it. He is blown away by the amount of content, build variety and level-up choice depth, calling it one of his favorite survivor-likes and a hidden gem. Main gripes are slow unlocking of build potential and uneven boss design. He hedges between S and top of A.
Liked
Disliked