I want to start off by saying that Rats, Bats, and Bones is a charming little game that's clearly had a lot of love put into it. At the time of writing this review, I have just shy of 40 hours into the game but have not yet finished the game completely (for reasons I'll get into later). For the price of $4.99 (less if you get it on sale, like I did) the amount of hours you can put into this game provides a great value.
The game has 24 traps divided unevenly between four different categories (Simple, Mechanical, Projectile, and Mystical). You have to unlock most of the traps by spending Silver, which you can get by completing levels (including going back to levels you've already beaten and playing them on a harder difficulty, or on Endless mode). Unlocking the different traps, along with their upgrades, and specific player bonuses that are always active, is very fun and addictive. However, a minor aspect of the unlocking I don't like is that the game only gives you a limit number of refunds in case you wanna respec which upgrades you've bought (this becomes less of an issue later in the game as you've already unlocked most of what you need; I never used any of the refunds). In addition, some traps are clearly underpowered compared to other traps. For example, the Feedback is a trap that prevents spellcasters from casting spells (those spells are usually things like healing other enemies, summoning other enemies, or teleporting). However, there are two big issues with the Feedback trap: it doesn't deal any damage unless upgraded (which isn't a major issue), and the fact that the Feedback trap needs to reset before it works again. That means that if you're on a stage with spellcasters, you pretty much NEED the Feedback trap in your lineup, and the trap won't even be effective at stopping most of the spellcasters from casting spells! Another example is the upgrade for the Lantern—the upgrade has the effect of reducing the amount of time that Ghosts (the most annoying, OP enemy in the game, imo) stay invincible after getting hit. Reducing, not preventing. On any stage with Ghosts (or their upgraded form, the Wraith) you basically need the trap AND its upgrade to have a chance at getting through, and even then it's a gamble because the effect is so unreliable.
On the flip side, some traps are ridiculously overpowered (in a good way!!!). The Fling Trap makes most stages with water an absolute breeze, and the trap still has some applications in stages where you need to stall enemies. Overall, however, there is a general lack of Floor traps, which usually only ever becomes an issue if you're trying Endless mode of some of the stages. On that subject, Ghosts are immune to many Floor traps, which is another thing that makes them super annoying. Similarly to the traps, the Player Bonuses also suffer from the issue that some are monumentally more useful than others. The Extra Scrap (+50 starting Scrap), Maze Builder (reduces barricade cost by 10), Upgrader (reduces upgrade cost by 50%), Architect (allows you to build 1 more trap of each type before cost increases), Crystal Shield (gives you 5 free hits before crystal health goes down), and Priest (increases radius of Mystical traps) player bonuses are all fantastic and have their own use cases, but most of the other player bonuses are either extremely specific and/or not powerful enough to be worth using most of the time over the aforementioned bonuses.
The game's level design is splendid in most instances. It's pretty fun to find out the best way to set up your Barricades to make the path as long and troublesome for the enemies as possible. However, I do have a general issue with the difficulty scaling. The beginning of each act start out fairly easy (this goes for all three acts of the game; I'm currently around the middle of Act 3). The first big difficulty spike comes toward the end of Act 1, but it's easy enough to overcome it by going back to other levels to get more Silver to unlock more traps and upgrades. From there, Act 2 is fairly easy until you get to the Estate, which I would say is the biggest difficult spike the game poses. Wave 8 of the Estate sends an absolute flood of enemies at you, and considering that the level features both spellcasters and Ghosts, you're going to be in a for a bad time. The final few levels of Act 2 are also fairly difficult, even when playing on Easy, but, strangely enough, the first few levels of Act 3 are super easy until you get to the necropolis levels (where I'm currently stuck).
Overall, I'd give the game an 8/10. Despite the issues I mentioned, I've had fun with the game so far. The game as it stands is fairly fun for what it is, but it really feels like it needs a few extra touches to polish the game up to reach its full potential. A little bit of balance could go a long way!
