I’ve spent a little over 20 hours totally locked in the world of Sodaman, an indie game in Early Access on Steam that almost defies coherent explanation. It’s a bullet-heaven, rogue-lite, twin-stick shooter with deckbuilding elements that takes inspiration from Poncle’s Vampire Survivors among other games. It’s fast, it’s frantic, it’s not without its flaws, but most important of all? You can probably already tell: it’s a great time.

The premise of the game is exactly what the title states. You control Sodaman, a super soldier who fights off alien insectoids with the power of soda. After the world goes through the Sodapocalypse, all sodas lack their all-important fizz. Sodaman, of course, will not stand for this and sets out to make things right. My favorite thing about this is the real-life inspiration behind the game.

Sodaman is developed by a four-person team. One of those four devs quit smoking and, in the place of cigarettes, he picked up soda. He drank it so much that his friends started calling him “Sodaman,” and here we are. Honestly, I could get behind the game because of the simple fact that there is nothing more indicative of a good friendship than clowning your boy for making his life better.

‘SODAMAN’ IS ‘VAMPIRE SURVIVORS’ TURNED UP TO 11

Once the cutscene for the incredibly ridiculous (in the most positive terms) story was over, I was ready to fire off on some mechanized bugs. What followed was a few minutes of me flexing my twin-stick shooter skills, but quickly realizing that wasn’t enough. This is where the Survivors influence comes in. As you kill enemies in Sodaman, you get crystals you can level up, selecting different soda-related power-ups ranging from increasing attack power to enemies being struck by lightning every time you reload.

All over the mini-map, symbols signify chests you can open by standing next to them for a few seconds. These are the cards you can use to further augment your run. When you open the chest, you choose from one of two cards, with a reroll available. You get five card slots, and combining them with the power-ups you get for leveling up can create some solid builds. My builds favored my aggressive playstyle in these types of games. But, if you want something more defense-based, it’s more than doable. Sodaman puts you at the mercy of RNGeezus, but there are enough available resources to reach your desired build.

Of course, there are some flaws. Power-up types need a better explanation. There are strike, deploy, and spark cards that are their own category. A little explanation of what that means early on would go a long way. Additionally, there is a noticeable difficulty spike as you progress. The issue lies in the way upgrades work. There are different tiers ranging from common to legendary. The common ones don’t feel like they make any difference, while the legendary tier is enemy-melting stuff. But, Sodaman‘s RNG being what it is, sometimes you’ll be stuck with lower-tier power-ups as the enemies get faster and more aggressive.

I STILL HAVE ZERO ISSUEs RECOMMENDING THIS GAME TO ANYONE

It’s Early Access and a small team — by and large, you know what you’re going to get. But, the devs are aware of the balancing issues and have been releasing fairly frequent updates to get certain bugs and things cleared as they work on larger updates to the game. For $3.99, though? Sodaman is worth getting and seeing how the game progresses.

After all, once March 3rd gets here, the sale ends and the price jumps to a whopping $4.99. Remember, not every Early Access title is going to be Hades 2. I’m enjoying my time with it. And in some ways, I’m even enjoying the early challenge of figuring the game out before they balance it. Gives me something to really shoot for. Just remember to give some grace to smaller dev teams. Sodaman is still a pretty good time at this stage.