Katanaut plunges you into a spiralling space station where every corridor hums with dread and every slash of your blade echoes through the void. This fast-paced, roguelite descent blends Metroidvania exploration with cosmic horror, challenging you to adapt, survive, and uncover the station’s twisted secrets. With memory fragments as your lifeline and time-bending resurrection tech at your back, Katanaut invites a deep dive into a world where every death is just another chance to fight smarter. Prepare for a haunting, high-stakes journey through flickering halls and fractured minds.

Katanaut Review Pros

• Awesome pixel art graphics. 
• 1.01GB download size. 
• Steam achievements. 
• Launch options – play the game and Non Volken/OG compatibility mode. 
• Steam trading card drops. 
• Full controller support. 
• Accessibility options – background visibility (default/faded/blur/heavy blur/retro/vibrant), player, items, and enemy brightness sliders, screenshake, font size slider, offhand auto aim, blood effects (high detail/low detail/off/flowers/confetti/bears/seasonal), dead body parts on/off, mouse cursor size, controller Crosshair, vibration, player syringe effects, player damaged effects, display fog, damage numbers, enemy and boss health total sliders, and invincibility on/off. 
• General settings – brightness slider, HUD size, window mode, v-sync, bloom filter, and speed run timer. 
• Can remap the controls for the controller and the keyboard. 
• Sound sliders – master, music, ambient, player attacks, and enemy attacks. 
• Five save slots. 
• Action platformer gameplay. 
• Opening tutorial section and pop-ups as you play. 
• Animated backgrounds. 
• Run based game-play loop. 
• In-game cutscenes and character interactions, which you can fast forward through. 
• You have a katana sword and a gun. Slash enemies with your Katana to reload your gun. 
• Find and equip new katana that have different attacks, abilities and stamina usage. 
• You can wall jump, double jump, jump, dodge roll, drop through platforms, fast drop, and slide your way around the world. 
• Find and equip new guns that, like the Katana, have different abilities, projectile types, reload and shoot speed, etc. 
• Any loot will have pop-up text to give stats and will show red and green for good and bad. 
• Full inventory management for skills, main hand, off hand, syringes, perks, and implants. 
• The world is a neon-soaked wet dream of violence and speed. 
• The music is bombastic and full of adrenaline and beats. 
• The controls are quite easy to pick up and use by default; obviously, changing them can improve them. 
• 2D game world. 
• The game does this cool thing where enemies will just be shadows walking around until you get close to them. It’s quite impactful when you mash in the neon skyline. 
• A lot of visual elegance from pixel dust (my name for it!) from enemies to the way the health transfers to your body, and all the slats of death and blood or teddy bears. 
• Loot containers are all over the world. 
• Handy restart option in the menu. 
• Skill can be passive or a button on your action bar to activate, such as attacks or a healing skill. You can only ever have two active at one time. 
• The syringes act like buffs or modifiers, and there are many types that change your character, like making weapons stronger or giving you more ammo, stamina, etc. You can have up to six active at one time. 
• Many secrets and alternate routes to find. 
• The combat is hack and slash, but very basic with a mix of ranged and melee, then you add in skills, and it’s just a glorious, violent mess. 
• Any effects or parties will flash up on screen. 
• Uses colour in clever ways, not just the shadows, but the general lighting, loot containers, etc, it’s just well implemented. 
• For me, it’s like N plus plus with weapons. 
• Stamina plays a huge part as attacks, parties, and doing will deplete it and can limit how much you attack in one burst. 
• Find vector portals and use them like fast travel points, as entering one brings up the map. 
• Pick the same skill to upgrade the stats of that skill. 
• You can pause the game. 
• Find memory fragments of gear to permanently unlock them as a choice at the start of a new run. 
• You can elect to destroy a skill or for plasma, very handy if the choices of skills available to you are no good. 
• Enemies will get an exclamation point above their heads when triggered. 
• Find exit doors to new areas, and at the start of these areas, you get to heal and refill your health syringes, choose a perk to use until death, and save and exit. 
• The save rooms, as it were, also show current playtime, kills, and other cool stats. 
• It has a world development and progression feel similar to Dead Cells, with areas clearly marked off, doors to progress, etc. 
• When you die, you go back to the central hub area. Here you char with the keeper, pet the cat, choose your blade, and unlock new parts, but that’s a spoiler. 
• The Keeper is in the hub and keeps track of all discoveries that are split into categories and have a completion percentage for skills, perks, weapons, blades, and implants. 
• You can indeed pet the cat found in your hub. 
• The map uncovers as you play and resets on every run. 
• You can hit barrels and boxes, etc, into enemies and even kill them with one. 
• The Specialist is where you use orbs to buy new items and gear for future runs. What you can buy/unlock here is determined by the fragments you found. 
• A lot of platforming sections, and the platforming is pretty solid. 
• Whatever your blood choice, it will splatter all over the floor and wall. 
• Use the default blade, and it propels you forward and nailing it against enemies causes you to do this rhythmic gymnastics killing spree sequence, and I love it. 
• Very impressive on-screen enemy count, it can get really crazy, really fast if you let it. 
• The levels are big enough that you can just mainline it to the door, or you can take your time and explore. 
• A cosmic horror is always around and can hunt you without warning. LIES, you get a sound of dripping blood or water if you prefer that, which indicates he or it is nearby. 
• The Weaver is the person in your hub who charges orbs to install found implants into your character. 
• Orbs and implants, etc, are permanent unlocks and upgrades. To balance it, you can only have so many active at once, and you need to spend orbs. 
• Find terminals to get little lore snippets and story background. 
• You can find little mini-boss-style encounters. 
• Press select to increase the size of the mono map in the corner, you can still play when the map is enlarged. 
• Enemies can appear through portals, and you can also take out the portal to stop them from spawning. 
• The enemies are cool and varied, a lot of Cthulhu inspired monsters and creations. 
• Encounter some of your team out in the world, and they will aid you. 
• The game does nail the tense atmosphere by the availability of health and how small the window is. You cannot pan the screen around, so every drop or jump could hide something sinister or fun. 
• Captain Chops Treasures is the guy in the hub who keeps track of all enemies, elites, and bosses you encounter. 
• Gear has rarity levels that dictate the strength or effectiveness of the gear. 
• Over time, people in your base can and will drop gear for you in the hub, plus you can unlock the ability to have a skill or drop before a run. 
• It is a very addictive game as it does a good job at least for the first handful of hours of making every run feel worthwhile and you find yourself wondering what’s at the hub now. 

Katanaut Review Cons

• I found I had to spend an amount of time to tweak the many visual settings, as yes, the colour is cool and looks awesome, but in the thick of it, you get confused on what is what and miss pick-ups and interaction points. 
• Not the most graphic options. 
• Learning to balance the stamina usage takes some time as the games pace in every way makes you think combat is the same bit it’s not. 
• It takes a few runs to get used to the flow of it all. 
• The game is not great at explaining what everything means and why this and that happens. 
• Never sure when it saves and what it saves. 
• The speed of the movement can make basic platforming a nightmare or have you overshooting a platform and dropping. 
• Every new run can take a while to wind up and get good in terms of weapons and perks because default combat is slow and tedious. 
• Wall jumping is not fun and not easy to pull off. 
• I did find that I leaned towards a certain set of skills and then never changed them. I never felt like I was missing out and had no reason to change. 
• I lost track of the number of times I hit the save and exit terminal. It’s way too easy to trigger. 
• Some of the text gets lost in the background. 
• I lost track of the story a lot because it’s so far and few between. 
• Any performance hitch really messes up the timing. 
• You cannot recycle weapons and it is a bit annoying. 

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Katanaut

Official Website: 

Developer: Voidmaw

Publisher: Acclaim, Inc.

Store Link:

Steam