Environmental Station Alpha (2015)

Disclaimer : I did not complete the game. I probably got halfway, but the work:reward ratio made the game a slog.

First, the good. The music is great and really stands out. The game has a very nice atmosphere - sorta like a more organic Metroid game.

I 100% understand why some people love this game. It offers a lot of secrets and freedom for hardcore players that like to dig deep and take on daunting platforming/risks. The sense of accomplishment is strong, because the game is quite brutal - in both combat and platforming.

But the brutality didn’t work for me. Some tough games I completely enjoy the challenge and want to overcome it - cuphead, aeterna noctis, Celeste. But this one felt really frustrating and unrewarding. The controls felt janky, the platforming way too clunky yet precise, the enemies impossible to manage with your delicate health bar. On top of that, exploring and trying to find upgrades was extremely cryptic. You had to spend so much time trying to pull off crazy platforming stunts just to check if a weird pixel indicates a passage or not. Usually not. The backtracking would just have multiple ability gates one after another, so it was also unrewarding. The 8 bit art style made it impossible to decipher where I should explore and what is a waste of time.

So yeah, I found myself averse to playing this game the longer I went. It almost felt like punishment. So sadly, it’s not for me.

Environmental Station Alpha is a stellar little example of a Metroidvania, with a tightly and fairly designed game wrapped up in more cryptic secrets than you can shake a clock hand at.

A robot is tasked with exploring a space station meant to house different environments - the robot must explore the haunted remains of the station by killing creatures, passing obstacles with the help of some powers along the way, and exploration to as many as five endings.

First off, the main game. With eight health upgrades and a handful of powerups, ESA is not the most expansive Metroidvania but in there is a strength. The map is tightly packed with all sorts of movement challenges (that can definitely be sequence broken) with the help of a hookshot, dash, and more. A lot of the game is finding one's way through the station and bumping into secrets behind every wall (MANY walls are hidden walls and encourage exploration) along with tough but fair bosses. The game even has an easy difficulty for people who want the exploration challenge but struggle with the boss fights.

The back half, however, is a whole other beast. Featuring an alien language to translate, mysterious keys and pillars, hidden bosses and areas, fiendish obstacle courses, and mechanics so cryptic that you need to type them in - it's quite unfair and might need a team of people working ARG style but it's such a compelling mystery that it begs to be explored. Peaceful ambience gives way to alien horrors and glitchy madness, and by the time the player is almost "done" with the game, there's an entire other side to the map they thought they knew. Even after beating two post-game endings a crazy New Game + is available, with a joke ending and oodles of sequence breaking.

The game has very simple and gorgeously detailed pixel art, with easy to understand tiling (for finding secrets) and some moody music that would make the Metroid series proud. Bosses are well animated and look fantastic in action.

Environmental Station Alpha is a game of two minds - one a tightly made Metroidvania, the other a maddeningly cryptic puzzle that would feel at home with La-Mulana. Fortunately, both minds are fantastic and well worth your time.