Review SIGINT 3/5 · Dec 4, 2022
Bizarre, tough shooter that I respect more than I love
Based purely on style, this is one of the year's coolest games. It's this chaotic, distorted explosion of like... hellish chrome psychedelia, that is unlike any other game that I'm aware of. I guess Thumper is the closest point of comparison, and the developer's prior game, Devil Daggers.
The gameplay is pretty good too, simple at the core, but …
Based purely on style, this is one of the year's coolest games. It's this chaotic, distorted explosion of like... hellish chrome psychedelia, that is unlike any other game that I'm aware of. I guess Thumper is the closest point of comparison, and the developer's prior game, Devil Daggers.
The gameplay is pretty good too, simple at the core, but with some complex movement options and more offensive options than you'd think at first. The advanced movement is tough for me to wrap my head around, but very neat when you watch replays from experienced players. The enemy designs are interesting, some functioning as a springboard for certain techniques, some having strength in numbers, some requiring a bit of setup or a special approach to kill properly.
I enjoy it, but not really enough to devote time and actually become good at it, which is where the main fun would actually come into play. One problem for me is just how the game actually works. Getting hit at any point ends your run and posts the remaining time to a leaderboard. Killing enemies adds time to the clock, and the ultimate goal is actually to end the run with as much time on the clock as possible, which you do only through hyper-efficient play, memorization, and mastery.
That scoring system can result in... emotionally-conflicting outcomes, like surviving longer than you ever have but having a worse score than some of your first ever attempts. It's a different way of approaching this sort of leaderboard-based game, and not one that I find a lot of motivation in. I don't really have it in me to perfect such a difficult game in that kind of high-risk, high-skill way, especially since I am not very good at mouse & keyboard shooters to begin with.
But it is still fun to play more casually, striving for a slightly better time, trying to last a bit longer, trying to master different techniques or enemy types, etc. And that wild aesthetic was totally worth seeing for myself. Due to how niche and impenetrable this can feel, I would recommend most people only get it on a sale, and perhaps the people who will really love it and who should buy it at full price know who they are.
