There are seven unique characters that are available to play in the current version of 20 Minutes Till Dawn, an Early Access rogue-lite shooter blend of Vampire Survivors and Enter the Gungeon where players must make it to the end of a grueling twenty minutes against wave after wave of enemies. And, while this might not seem like much compared to the sixty-minute runs in Vampire Survivors, it's actually quite a difficult task.
Each character has different starting health and a unique ability, which causes them to exceed or struggle with certain builds. Not only that, but each character also has their own uniquely beautiful pixel art appearance as well as individual skills that can appear after looting the chest from the first in-game boss, so let's go through each of 20 Minutes Till Dawn's cast and talk about what characters are the best and worst.
7 Scarlett
Starting Health | Innate Ability | Potential Skills |
|---|---|---|
3 HP | Immolate: On every 3rd shot, Scarlett launches a wave of fire that burns any enemies hit for 3 damage per second. |
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Let's just say this upfront, none of the characters in 20 Minutes Till Dawn are bad in any capacity. These rankings just take the default Health, Innate Ability, and Potential Skills of each character in mind and pit them against each other.
And once all that has been done, Scarlet sadly falls into last place. Immolate is basically just a variation of the Fire Starter Upgrade (abilities really matter in these difficult games), her starting Health is lower than average (though not by much), and her potential Skills, while useful, aren't nearly as broken as most of the other Skills on other characters. With the Flame Cannon, Scarlett is a ton of fun and some people may find her to be their favorite playable character, but on this ranking, she's in last.
6 Hina
Starting Health | Innate Ability | Potential Skills |
|---|---|---|
3 HP | Shadow Clone: Hina dashes in the direction of the mouse on Right-Click, leaving behind a Shadow Clone. |
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Honestly, Hina isn't far above Scarlett and only really pulls ahead because her Shadow Clone Innate Ability is useful for both mob clearing and movement while also benefiting from a very low cooldown overall.
Outside that, Hina is just about as good as Scarlett, though her Potential Skills are a bit more useful on average, with Maneuver especially being capable of creating some absurd builds. That said, with an Innate Ability focused around movement instead of attack or defense, Hina can only go this far.
5 Diamond
Starting Health | Innate Ability | Potential Skills |
|---|---|---|
7 HP | Tanky: Starts with very high HP. |
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Diamond is the "buff-lady" of the squad with a whopping seven starting HP (more than double what either Hina or Scarlett start with). It's very difficult to make it through a twenty-minute run the first time, especially for beginners in these types of games, but it sure is much easier with seven health instead of three or four.
That said, because her Tanky Innate Ability is focused on survivability rather than raw damage, she falls short of the rest of the cast. Thankfully, her Potential Skills are all pretty incredible, even Berserk, which is a skill that actively rewards players for getting hit.
4 Lilith
Starting Health | Innate Ability | Potential Skills |
|---|---|---|
4 HP | Necromancy: When Lilith kills an enemy, a spirit is summoned from their corpse that chases nearby enemies and deals 8 damage on-hit. |
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Lilith is a bit of an odd case as her ranking has nothing to do with her Necromancy Innate Ability. Rather, the character ranks so high because her Potential Skills are all absolutely incredible. Undead Army is one of the best Skills in 20MTD, Necrophile is always helpful on any build, and Necromancer just makes Lilith's Necromancy Ability actually useful while also granting a Summon Damage buff.
It's obvious this character was designed with the Batgun in mind, and it works very well for her. Though, much like another indie game, Wildcat Gun Machine, the order in which the player picks their Upgrades with the Batgun really matters.
3 Shana
Starting Health | Innate Ability | Potential Skills |
|---|---|---|
4 HP | Reroll: Can reroll Upgrade options once per Level. |
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Who would have thought that the default character of the game would make it into the top three? But, let's be real, being able to reroll Upgrades or Items in any rogue-lite is a highly sought-after Skill and Shana has it.
Not only that, but Shana's potential Skills are also amazing and incredibly fun. Ascension is a unique gimmick that upgrades Shana's stats to absurd levels, Quick Learner lets the player level up to the late 40s or early 50s in a single run, and Specialize can lead to some truly wacky results such as having three Magic Lenses.
2 Spark
Starting Health | Innate Ability | Potential Skills |
|---|---|---|
3 HP | Storm Caller: Bullets on impact have a 50 percent chance of calling down Lightning that deals 5 damage. |
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Spark wasn't available in the demo version of the game (of which a bunch of demos are available right now than's to Next Fest) but is by far one of the best 20MTD characters now that she has a spot on the roster.
For one, her Storm Caller Innate Ability is one of the few ways to target a specific enemy with Lightning in the game. Two, this ability triggers constantly and stacks to hilariously absurd levels with other Lightning-based Upgrades. And three, her Potential Skills and Innate Ability work well with just about any gun or build in the game. Spark's biggest downside by far (other than her lower-than-average HP) is the fact that her Potential Skills are all just "okay". They aren't fantastic, they aren't even great, they're just "okay".
1 Abby
Starting Health | Innate Ability | Potential Skills |
|---|---|---|
4 HP | Fan the Hammer: When Abby right-clicks, she shoots all her remaining ammo in random directions while spinning like a tornado. |
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Abby is just sort of the complete package. While all the other characters had a long list of pros and cons, Abby is basically all pros. She has good starting HP, a fantastic Innate Ability with Fan the Hammer, and her Potential Skills both modify her Innate Ability and are also just strong in general.
While it might not seem like this character who fires bullets randomly on right-click is all that good, Abby is absolutely the best of the best, with the added bonus of being a ton of fun to actually play.
20 Minutes Till Dawn is available in Early Access on PC.