LYMBUS is hostile to my existence and continues to demand brain cells that I have not yet grown

What are you, LYMBUS? What barrel were you raised in? It's like I just sauntered over to the fridge and tried to grab a cucumber from the jar, only to find a disturbingly delicious piece of my own brain. Like a creature from Flatland trying to play 4D chess, and all the pieces are tiny carvings of my face with “lol look at this bastard” written on my forehead. I quite like it.

“We've combined your favorite genres into one disgusting piece of software! You're welcome, games journalists,” reads the Steam page for the demo. That's a very polite way of kicking me in the head and calling me a bitch, LYMBUS.

Okay, let’s try it out. LYMBUS: Incomplete Edition is the demo from Happy Accident Studios. Earlier this year, they released Anomalytics, which was billed in part as a boomer shooter but also gave you a calculator. LYMBUS itself is a roguelike bullet hell where you have to play cards to do anything but move. Requiring a real-time regenerative resource to play, the cards let you do things like shoot, slash, parry, dodge, and shoot again, but with more bullets. The cards burn up when used, but you can find more by traversing the tiles scattered around.

The trick is that you have to craft the cards by switching between them as you run around like a scared little wombat running from a lawnmower made of weapons. Here's the setup:

The year is 19XX. Major advances in neuromechanical research have allowed the most common human actions to be transferred onto memory cards. Major oversights in said research have also ensured that no one remembers to save a backup. After a catastrophic accident leaves most of the population in a coma, you are tasked with delving into humanity's collective subconscious to retrieve memories that may hold the key to ending the blackout.

Where are you in all this? You are here:

Thanks for that. Here's some more info:

Move with your keyboard. Do everything else with your cards. In LYMBUS, apply maximum strategy to your deck building, then throw that strategy out the window in screen-shaking, bullet hell-style battles. Combat takes place in real-time, with no turns or slowdowns, meaning resources are limited and every moment counts.

LYMBUS will be released later this year. Don't let that scare you.