Hive Jump 2: Survivors Review

Hive Jump 2: Survivors is a bullet-heaven action roguelite developed by Graphite Lab, Joystick, and Sonamu Games and published by Midwest Games. A sequel to the… currently-mixed-reviews-on-Steam Hive Jump, you’ll be faced with overwhelming odds against a seemingly endless horde of alien bugs with only your jetpack, a gun, and the courage to exact your vengeance against these mindless foes. So… I’ve been playing way too much HELLDIVERS 2 (over 400 hours now), killing bugs en masse is actually pretty appealing to me these days, and checking the Early Access reviews, it looks like it’s being better received. Still, I have to judge this for myself.

The goal of the game is pretty simple: All you have to do to beat the run is survive 14 waves and beat the boss. As the waves go on, more enemies and more enemy types are introduced until, eventually, your screen will be absolutely filled with bugs and the occasional screenwipe from a power-up. How quickly that happens depends on your difficulty, and the higher it is, the more Amber you earn that you use for permanent upgrades.

Now, getting to the actual fight and… look, if you’ve played or seen Vampire Survivors, you’ll find yourself in slightly familiar territory. Your abilities and guns go off without doing anything and if you don’t aim yourself, your weapons auto-target. That means, with the right build, you can just stand in place and let enemies come to you while everything dies. Your only defensive move is using your jetpack to jump over enemies or even over some walls. Fuel is limited but recharges, so you need to manage it properly or else you might find yourself getting mauled without a chance to escape. However, your chances of survival will increase the more you play, through the items and upgrades you obtain.

Levelling up grants a passive boost for free while surviving the wave by running down the timer grants you active upgrades like weapons and utility items that you’ll need to spend your hard-earned Goo on. Goo also acts as your EXP too, so you’ll always have at least some on hand. If you have the same equipment with the same rarity, you can combine them to upgrade it to the next rarity tier, making it much stronger. Some waves will have a bonus mission for a chest that will drop rare upgrades and Goo, and destroying hives will do the same.

This is all fun and can get frantic, trying to survive long enough to get the stuff you need to survive a little longer. That being said, it can get a little annoying. It’s not uncommon to suddenly die out of nowhere, the bonus mission to upload data has a small radius that isn’t indicated all that well, and some enemies are just so insanely fast that you don’t have time to react to them. I also feel a little restricted by only having three slots for active items, since you don’t have the room for experimentation or for crazier set-ups.

However, everything will become easier the more you play. As mentioned before, in between runs, you can use the Amber collected in the level to purchase permanent upgrades. However, there are a few caveats. For one thing, you can’t refund upgrades you’ve chosen so you really have to be sure of your choices. The other thing is that many of the upgrade options (along with upgrade items) are locked behind achievements, so if you want to upgrade your health regeneration or have more starting equipment, that might take a while. Still, if you want to play purely with no upgrades, you can turn them off at any time, which is nice for those looking for a challenge.

As for general flaws, well… There's no tutorial. You’re just sort of thrown into the deep end with much of anything. There is a survival guide, but all that does is tell you the very basics of the game, which you’ll figure out on your own. I also highly recommend turning on High Res Text, because it can be difficult to read. I thought Goo was calculated in thousands, but in reality, the pixel text made it look like there were a couple of extra zeroes. Still, even with tons of enemies coming in at all sides, the game ran very well with no drops in framerate.

Hive Jump 2: Survivors is completely fine and very fun… but it’s nothing really new or exciting. You can definitely have a great time, with plenty to unlock and tons of bugs to kill, but there isn’t anything I can say that really makes it stand out from all the other bullet-heaven roguelites out there apart from the aesthetic. It’s worth the price of admission, but I think there could be something more other than a jump.