I’ve always been a fan of clicker games. I love placing down an item and seeing my currency tick up that little bit faster. However, there is never any real gameplay to clicker games other than placing down your buildings. So when I saw Vostok Inc was an 80’s themed mix of clicker game and twin-stick shooter, I was all in… but not in a good way.

The Story

Calling the plot of this game a ‘story’ would be a little over the top. You play as ‘the Boss’, the CEO of Vostok Inc and the pilot of the company’s (seemingly) only spaceship. Your right hand man and personal advisor is Jimmy, a Wolf of Wall Street kind of character who drives you in your mission to earn Moolah. Moolah is the currency Vostok Inc’s universe runs on. It is also the loop of the gameplay as you expand from planet to planet, colonising and exploiting new worlds for as much Moolah as possible.

The universe in Vostok Inc has 6 uniquely bright and visually interesting solar systems, with a total of 41 planets. Throughout the universe you battle a range of vidid and memorable enemies. From cute panda bears to Egyptian gods. The developers (Nosebleed Interactive) of Vostok Inc did not lack imagination when creating your competitors to that sweet, sweet Moolah.

The Game

As stated in the intro, Vostok Inc is a mixture of clicker and twin-stick shooter. You travel from planet to planet in your spaceship, blasting enemies and asteroids as you go. The main gameplay of Vostok Inc is the twin-stick shooter. You interact with enemies in three ways:

Firstly, flying around the solar system will trigger random enemies to attack you. The more you kill, the harder they get. That is until you either have too many enemies on screen to fight so either fly away, or you get blown up.

The second instance is when you get a warning on your screen saying ‘enemies approaching’. Here one or two scout ships will appear on the screen. You have a short time to destroy them before they call in reinforcements. If you do kill them you can go on with your day. However, if not your screen will become locked and a scripted battle will take place. The best way to describe these battles is like a room in a Zelda dungeon or in The Binding of Isaac. These ‘rooms’ have a perquisite pattern of enemies and you have to do your best to dodge them and destroy them. The ‘rooms’ were the best part of the combat, however, can become very tedious if one would spawn in the middle of a race or if you were already battling other enemies.

Finally, the last type of combat is with bosses. Each solar system has its own boss that unlocks when you’ve reached a milestone in your Moolah collection. I thought each boss was well designed and fit the theme of their system perfectly. Nevertheless, they were all pretty easy to beat, apart from one (which I’ll talk about later). I’m used to playing a lot of twin-stick shooters so maybe I just have an advantage, but I would have loved a bit more of a challenge from the bosses.

Once you reach a planet you can invest your hard earned Moolah into different buildings that represent different industries. The industries include farming, mining, real estate and even the video game industry. Each building you purchase adds to that planet’s Moolah value, which is then added to your total value via an ATM ( Auto Transfer Moolah) module. So obviously, the more buildings you buy, the more Moolah you get. What’s really interesting though, is that through different upgrades to each industry, it is possible for combos to occur. This is great because it means building the right industries together can get you bonuses to your Moolah. Since Moolah is the life blood of the game, these combos help significantly in the early game to get your interplanetary corporation running.

After you’ve subjected enough populations and colonised enough planets, your Moolah can be used to purchase upgrades to your radar, motheship and weapons. These upgrades are great and a fantastic way to help you snowball into a Moolah magnet (literally). The upgrade system to your radar and weapons in Vostok Inc is awesome. It makes you go from this small insignificant ship to a powerhouse. Blasting enemies with unicorns and making them pay you for the pleasure. They show locations on the your radar for things like races, planets, enemies and most importantly managers.

Managers are bonuses to your Moolah income. In total there are 12 executives you need to keep happy in order to keep a nice bonus. Then below them is your middle managers. These guys give you a smaller bonus and can be lost if your ship gets blown up! So be careful when you’re fighting those space pandas. The executives remind me of the 90’s tamagotchis, they constantly need food, drink and presents to stay happy and keep rewarding you with a big fat bonus.

To get their rewards each executive has its own mini-game. The mini-games are variations of well known mobile games like Snake (Tapeworm) and Flappy Bird (Cave Chopper). My favourite is Woodguy Jr. where you play as a lumberjack chopping wood. The goal is to knock out as many pieces of wood from a tree without getting hit on the head. These mini-games are a fun distraction from the main game and give your executives treats to help keep up your bonus. One tip for this game is; keep your executives happy! The highest bonus I got to was 138%, which is a massive and really helps gain you Moolah in the end game.

Art and Music

The art and music are perfect for the game’s 80’s theme. The bold neon colours of the planets and enemies mixed with the Tron-like Synth music, blasting beats at you as you blow up stuff with your laser beams, is epic! I love that we’re having an 80’s revival in popular culture and Vostok Inc hits the nail on the head with its art style and music.

Problems

Pardon the cliche but this was a game of two halves for me. The first was extremely fun and rewarding. I loved the art direction of the game and its soundtrack is amazing. Seeing your income go up from 0 to billions of Moolah is very satisfying, showing the culmination of your hard work conquering people and worlds. Nevertheless, after the second solar system the game just becomes a grind.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a grind in a game (I play Destiny 2) but this was something else. There’s no real direction from the game as to what you should do to help you gain more Moolah, you’re just left to work it out yourself. As I said above, there are combos you can between industries to help you make more money. However, later in the game this is not possible because the new buildings are so expensive that you can’t afford to upgrade them. That is unless you AFK for 20 minutes and save up some Moolah. On the other hand, even doing this can be bad as your executives get angry and you loose your bonus. What’s makes it even more frustrating is that playing their mini-games does not give you enough rewards to keep them happy. I found the best way to get their items was to blow up asteroids. Therefore, I spent an hour in the starter system grinding asteroids, trying to get enough items to keep them happy!

This lack of direction also effected the combat and upgrades too. I was getting beat by a boss over and over again. I could’t understand why my weapon (which was upgraded to level 17) wasn’t doing any damage to him. It only occurred to me by accident that you could mix different weapon types together and create totally new ones. I accidentally made the ‘Laser Unicorn Attack Squad’, which I think is the most powerful weapon in the game. So I went back to the boss and beat him in about three seconds flat! This is a really cool feature of the game, I just wish the game had told me it was there and how the upgrade system worked!

Furthermore, to try and give me a boost I spent a lot of my Moolah upgrading my ship. This was to give me more Moolah for blowing up asteroids, enemies and winning races. Though this did help a little, I felt that the Moolah received was way too little to get me snowballing again like I had been at the start of the game. I felt like if the upgrades could be buffed by about 10 times, then they would be worth the investment. The money gained from doing these activities was like watching a raindrop hit a lake, they did’t benefit me as much as I needed them to!

Finally, Jimmy was the last problem for me. Firstly his annoying voice every time he popped up was infuriating! Then his dialogue was just so random. When it was scripted parts of the game it was always clever and funny. However, when he would just randomly pop up and tell me random things like a cooking recipe, or if he was ‘breaking the fourth wall’, it added to my frustration of the game. Sure, when I first read them I thought they were interesting or funny, but after the twentieth time they just became annoying. To be honest, you can turn off Jimmy’s phone calls and his annoying voice (which I did). Nevertheless, as a reviewer I thought I should leave his calls on to get the full experience of the game and now, I’m kind of annoyed I did.

Summary

There was a lot about Vostok Inc I liked. It’s 80’s art style makes it stand out against other indie titles that tend to go towards a pixelated art style, which I think is oversaturated the indie market. It’s first few hours are so fun to play! You are making progress, exploiting new worlds and making tons of Moolah. However, the game quickly becomes a grind that does a poor job of guiding the player through that grind and bringing them out the other side. It took me over 20 hours to beat this game! I’d say half of those hours was spent wasting time, destroying asteroids to keep my managers happy and waiting for my Moolah to go up. If the game was over in 10 hours I would have left feeling I got a return on my investment. However, the grind made me feel like Vostok Inc was a chore or a job, something I had to chip away at to finally reach the end.

Therefore, I give Vostok Inc by Nosebleed Interactive a score of

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