Continuing with my ongoing addiction to shooty roguey twin-stick games (like Nuclear Throne, Deathstate, Razenroth or Ubermosh) I recently grabbed a copy of Straimium Immortality. I was immediately drawn to the intensely odd visuals and the game world itself, the overall atmosphere and designs of the creatures/environments, but I was a little disappointed with the gameplay, which felt a bit awkward at first.

Straimium Immortality is not a twin-stick shooter, and it controls a bit more like a horizontal-scrolling shooter: your flying ninja alien guy can only shoot left or right, you have movement in all angles but you can only dodge in the 4 cardinal directions. More like a single-stick shooter. However, once you delve deeper into your randomly-generated "cubicus" you gradually unlock items/perks which allow for much more versatility: weapons that fire in various directions/ranges/firing rates, improvements to dodge (including i-frames and diagonal dodging), plus special spell/missile attack things, and a "ninja power" which has a 10 second cooldown.

Like the appearance and atmosphere of the game itself, the weapons and powers are equally surprising and can completely change the experience. Some weapons fire bubbles that float up toward the top of the screen, some powers cause you to teleport, some weapons fire stuff which moves around in unpredictable random directions. Once you stack a whole bunch of these powers together you can end up with a very powerful and unusual build, very different each time.

There are also unlockable "mutators" which change the game even further, adding all sorts of unusual bells and whistles to the experience. And that's not even mentioning the various game modes: you can explore a small, medium or large cubicus (the cubicus is a square of connected random rooms) and also boss rush mode or a "cubicus universe" mode where one must conquer a huge series of connected cubicuses. And there's a whole bunch of other stuff that I've not unlocked or which I don't understand.

Straimium Immortality is an intentionally puzzling and unclear: part of the fun of this game is trying to figure out the gameplay mechanics themselves, what certain items do, what certain rooms are meant for. A waterfall flows down beside a large mantis-looking statue. You pass it many times during runs, but perhaps you'll bump into a creepy old hermit guy who gives you a helpful hint regarding this room. Much of the game is learned through blind experimentation and I found this really enjoyable.

The sound design and music for the game is nice but nothing special. It's mostly 16-bit chip-tune music and odd bleep-bloop blobby sounds. I would have liked if the devs had gone with something more peculiar to match the game world, but the sound does match the pixellated aesthetic and it's pleasing overall.

The biggest draw card of the game is the art style, the bizarre, alien world (totally and unflinchingly unique, including the alien use of words/mangled english) and the great opportunity for replayability. Thus far I've made hundreds of attempts at the "small cubicus" and I've only fought the final boss once (and lost!). This is a tough game, but it's fair, addictive and can be mastered in time. Definitely worth checking out.