20 Minutes till dawn is a shoot-them-up roguelike game where you are in depths of hell, waves upon waves of monsters are trying to turn you into a pile of bloody dust. You will need to deal with different types of tentacled creatures, with different attacks, ranging from close up to ones that can shoot back at you with their own projectiles.
You are tasked to slay every last one of abomination in 20 minutes.
The game is featured on Steam (PC only), Android and iOS. I personally own a M1 Macbook, so I played with a virtual machine, but you can also try it free from the iOS App Store for Mac.
(But the Windows emulated version is better for Mac).
This review will cover both the PC and mobile versions, at points I will outline the differences. If I have not made a distinction for each section, then that feature / review covers both versions.
This is a fun and strategic game, where you have the ability to combine different power ups to efficiently kill all the monsters. The only thing that can hold you back is your creativity.
Gameplay
The core gameplay, you spawn in an open endless world (or a confined area, depending on what map you choose), at the start of the fight you bring two things.
A character with a unique ability and a weapon with unique attribute(s).
After spawning in, you will have 20 minutes to survive the whole night. You will be bombarded by waves of weak enemies, getting stronger over time.
Controls [PC]
Use Left Mouse Click to shoot at your cursor.
Right Mouse Click to use a special ability with your character.
Hold Right Mouse Click to charge up and fire a powerful shot for certain weapons like the Crossbow.
Space to enable Auto-Lock, your cursor is automatically moves to the closest monster
Controls [Mobile]
Tap the telescopic sight joystick on the right side to shoot.
You can drag to aim your weapon and release it to shoot.
On the left side the joystick is to move your character.
Then there is a special ability button for your character, if there is a magnet icon, then your character has no special ability.
If no joystick is idly visible, then your joysticks are dynamic. You can change this in settings to have fixed joysticks.
By default, auto aim is enabled on mobile.
Main Mechanics
Killing enemies will drop white experience orbs, moving close to it automatically picks it up.
On the top of your screen you will see your experience bar, when that is full, an upgrade window pops displaying different skills (upgrades).
When you select a skill, on the left side of the window, will show all the buffs, sometimes nerfs (debuffs) associated with that skill. On the right side, will show all future skills that can be available to upgrade after choosing the current skill.
Boss
2 different bosses can spawn, each spawn at about 1 and 2 thirds way into the night.
Killing bosses drop a red pentagram disc, which when picked up, lets you choose from 3 tomes which are like upgrades but with downsides…similar to a curse?
The “upgrades” you can choose, severely impacts your game.
Example, the Tome of Glass removes any chance of dodging, making it so that if you take any damage, you die instantly.
Increasing hp becomes pointless in this case. But not all tome upgrades are this brutal, I, personally, almost always chose the Tome of Wind that changes the damage to be based on your character’s speed. But it reduces the base damage of all attacks by 15%.
But you don’t find any tomes you like or don’t want to choose. You can just choose to drop them.
That’s about it, so start experimenting with skills and what works well for you.
Difficulty
20 MTD is a very challenging early game, as you don’t have access to the more powerful weapons and characters. After you unlock some characters and weapons, it becomes a lot easier and fun. The base gameplay isn’t really hard if you know what you are doing.
The controls are pretty smooth if you are playing on PC. On mobile it is very stiff but largely playable for most people. If you are on Mac, using the iOS version of 20 MTD, is not ideal, so try to get a virtual machine or emulator.
Graphics and Audio
The main art style is flat and pixelated. Featuring a sort of retro aesthetic from the 90s. This retro style perfectly suits the feeling of hunting and slaying eldridge demons.
The soundtrack is dark and dramatic, building the perfect suspenseful atmosphere, through a combination of synths (synthesiser) and bass guitars, finished with a subtle bass drum. It really makes you feel like you’re in a world where the walls are coming in, by the walls, I mean the 100+ monster trying to get a piece of you.
Performance
On PC, it is very smooth with no lag or input delay, no technical or graphical issues emerged.
On Mobile, it is mostly smooth with occasional frame drops. As the night progresses and the number of monsters increase, the game will become slower. Especially on mid range phones it will be more noticeable.
Content and Replayability
The game is very long with 3 maps, and 15 levels in each map, slowly getting harder and harder and harder.
Luckily you have plenty of characters, to try and test out new strategies.
Unfortunately, on mobile some of the characters are locked behind a paywall, compared most of the characters being behind watching a ton of ads. On PC, all characters are available without paying real life money.
There are occasional updates based on the upcoming holidays like halloween, chinese new year.
Conclusion
This is an amazing dark fantasy shoot-them-up game that will leave you on the edge of your seat. It is a must try for roguelike fans or if you just want to be an experimenter.
Final Score: 9.6/10
However on mobile, there is a lot of content locked behind a mountain of ads (½ of the locked characters are behind 5-10 ads).
[Mobile Version]
But I will give credit where credit is due, in the game if you don’t want to watch ads and grind only for the in-currency locked characters, you can!
So you don’t have to watch any ads, if you really don’t want to.
But the grind is harder on mobile, with characters being far more expensive on mobile than their PC counterparts.
[PC Version]
Mobile Port Score: 7.8/10
Footnotes:
All images that were used in this post are screen captures of the game