20XX is a 2016 Roguelike Platform Game, heavily inspired by the Mega Man series.
Though the game's cutscenes itselves offer little explanation, the datalore entries explain what is going on: a robot uprising has happenned, and the two creators of those robots, Dr. Brighton and Dr. Flat, have hired the mercenaries Nina and Ace to quell their creations.
And that is basically the game's plot up until the end. Nina or Ace go through a stage, beat the boss, go to another stage, until the ending is unlocked. The stages are very similar to Mega Man where you go through a stage and then fight a boss at its end, but given its nature as roguelike, 20XX 's levels are randomly generated, and though death is permanent, you can use the Soul Chip items of a previous run to upgrade your character to the next one.
Developed and published by BatteryStaple Games. Directed by Chris King.
- Abandoned Laboratory: The Jungle Station was clearly used by scientists for some sort of use, but now only hostile robots and plants inhabit it.
- An Ice Person: Shatterbreak creates balls of energy which he then transforms in ice projectiles which are launched upon the player character.
- Animal Mecha: Almost all bosses are some kind of robotic animal. The exceptions are Perforator Alpha and Vile Visage, which are a robotic-looking face and a turret with multiple guns.
- Background Boss: Vile Visage is attached to the right side of the wall you face him.
- Boss Subtitles: Every single boss has some kind of title attached to it.
- Blatant Lies: Right at the opening cutscene you can see Sharp lying to the public in a tv interview there is no reason to panic while a robot uprising is happenning right on the background.
- Bottomless Pit: With exception of the factory levels there is several of them in each level, though they are not a One-Hit Kill, but take one point of health.
- Dirty Coward: Flat commands a giant spider mecha against the protagonists, but hides behind barriers, hazards and waves of mooks and the fact the head is well above the player character, running away after damaged enough, and basically never directly attacking our heroes.
- Dual Boss: Twin Star are two robots who fight while connected by a beam of light. Should one die, it will quickly resurrect if the other isn't killed fast enough, so it is advised to deplete both each bars equally upon until the end.
- Evil Knockoff: Mook exclusives to the final boss are poorly made clones of the playable characters. Some are only able to self-destruct or charge in your direction, with a few able to do anything effective.
- Eternal Engine: The Superhot Facility, which as the name hints on contains pools of molten metal which damage the player character.
- Evil Old Folks: Brighton and Flat seem to be both in advanced age and turn on the protagonists once they get rid of their evil robots.
- Excuse Plot: Though the lore expands quite a bit on what is happenning and what the bosses are, the game's minimal amount of cutscenes spells out it is focused on action with zero drama involved.
- Floating Continent: Skytemple Skycity, which by the background it's so high in the sky that clouds are floating between the partly destroyed buildings.
- Grimy Water: The Jungle Station level features pools of liquid which are not blue and do damage. Considering the level name and premise, it is very probably polluted waste.
- Interface Spoiler: One you can easily discover if you die earlier than the final stages, given the game's hardcore nature: Brighton and Flat kill the heroes with a bomb in the game over screen using a button called "payment". Yeah, they're villains.
- Medium Awareness: Flat throws the health bar away at the beginning of his boss fight. Which is quite jarring since despite the game having humour elements there were zero hints of any fourth-wall breaking elements up until that point.
- More Dakka: Perforator Alpha attacks you with only and only a barrage of projectiles: four from drones in the corner and others from turrets in his body.
- Playing With Fire: Kur, which is based on a dragon, comes equipped with a flamethrower which he uses to launch fireballs towards the player character.
- Ridiculously Human Robots: Both Nina and Ace look undistinguishable from the human characters, specially with Nina having natural-looking blonde hair.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Yes, the format of levels are randomly generated, but their theme is not: the Artic Datacenter level features slippery ice platforms.