ASTROSMASH

Not worth $15. I'm a fan of the original, and while this updated version controls well, has decent graphics (although sometimes the graphics get too busy), and has some pretty good music, there are too many things holding it back: - the main game is short. I completed it in 45 minutes on my first try - there is no pause, no saving and no way to exit the main game while in play - there are no online leaderboards, nor a high score single life mode, like there was in Shark! Shark! - the online setup is unclear, and I could not find anyone online to play with - the original Intellivision game is not included - there are only three boss fights, and they are all the same boss, expect with a new wrinkle added in later stages - the boss fight seems to have a glitch where the big meteor stays at the top of the screen in one area, where it used to come down and move around in the Amico videos Overall, it might be worth around $5 or less for fans of the original, and some patches could fix many of the problems, as it sits, it doesn't give me enough bang for more buck and feels like a letdown after waiting so long for it to be released.

This game is pretty underwhelming. I have a gaming laptop and a steam deck I am playing on. When I play on my deck, it's decked and hooked up to a 4k Samsung tv. So I start this game up on my steam deck docked and see the man getting in the rocket and the generic adventure movie music (think 3 steps from hell trailer music). after fiddling a bit, I figure out you have to hit x then play. "action" is X I guess. but you hit A to get into this menu. the first go I have no left right for some reason. the 2d time it worked. Maybe a proton issue. Keep in mind this isn't deck verified, but it's like no one working on testing this game tried this to make it stupid proof? Come on. What a mess this game is. The first thing I noticed is the game is locked at 30 fps. It's almost like this game is designed from some hardware from 2016. Why not have some options in the settings menu? Why was 30fps chosen in the year 2023 and on the PC version. Terrible. Also no pause. It's like no one tested this game and just shoved it out the door. I don't see a peep out of any of the company's involved in this on the support side or anything really. Is anyone awake here? Back to the game play. It's just generic shooting rocks. the rocks look ok. The backgrounds look nice at times. There is a tiny bit of colored lighting. The music is covered up by the explosions. I guess the 6 producers this game had didn't bother to fix the mix. I heard there was a really good sound guy on this game, but I can't tell. Where is my Dolby atmos? rumble control? I see you can tweak the sounds in the settings at least but you can't get to them from the main game loop. I couldn't get online to work. I'm sure it's just a dumb as the rest of the game. There is cross play platform, I'm guessing to a mac person? Not sure how you access that. I'm not a next level gamer I guess. No steam cloud support. They could at least allow you to save your high scores across devices by adding that. No remote play together listed but this would probably work if you wanted to play with a friend. I did play to my TV using remote play from my laptop and it worked fine. Also to my Apple TV 4k across the house. that also was fine. If you want to spend 15, bucks for a cool game with explosions, space and shooting, check out Nova Drift on steam. it's amazing and much more polished and more importantly family FUN.

UPDATED REVIEW =============== Pause was finally added (thanks devs). The only other nuance is that I don't think you can make the left mouse button to fire. This is awkard for wsad users since most games allow for this (Jacobs Law of UX). It is a fun game but lacks finish to justify the cost. In comparison, look at what games like Nova drift offer. If I can leave some constructive advise for the devs to improve the quality of life for this game. 1. Eliminate the need to reach a certain amount of points to progress. I know all the purists might complain about doing this, but is it needed? For those seeking high scores removing it makes more sense. Keeping it makes the level redundant when the song loops,AND it also prevents you from having a nice screen where you can select an unlocked level to play, like Shark Shark. Cut it off when the song ends. Selecting levels will effect leaderboard score negatively, so disabling leaderboards when revisiting a level and an explanation to why is needed. I would keep this mode separate from campaign. 2. Challenges Tis is a low cost way of adding replayability for you don't necessarily need graphic assets. You could offer challenges such as "less powerups" or "more ufos" for people that have completed the game. 3. Difficulty Selection Like challenges, this will also add replayability for people that have completed the game on the current normal difficulty. Selecting a higher difficulty can increase the amount or speed of the asteroids or enemies. 4. Unlockable Content These could be additional ships or even unlockable power ups. The ship sprites don't have a lot of frames so this should be low cost to implement. Power ups will be trickier because it could throw off the balance of the game. Additionally, you can have unlockable art work like Forager does with its comic. 5. More Modes Let's face it, there is not enough people online to use that mode. Maybe a missions mode that has you revisiting a level to complete a specific task and a daily mission. Last Note ------------- Pricing is always difficult because you want to make up for the cost of labor and purchased unity store assets or freelancers up front. However, a good game should make up for the cost of developing it by the amount of sales at an enticing price. If you add the options above I can see maybe selling this for $9-10 ORIGINAL REVIEW ================ Leaving my negative feelings toward Intellivision out of this review. PROS -------- - Beautiful game with nice particle effects - Simple mechanics - Nice arcade SFX that somehow fit in with the music seamlessly - Nice music score - Asteroids timed mostly to the music - Little things like the ground turning red when an asteroid hits adds a nice touch. CONS -------- - NO PAUSE that I'm aware of, which is a huge problem - Price is too high. - Challenges or missions mode should be added for replay - Clouds and fog background layer should move slowly so it feels less static. SUGGESTIONS --------------------- - Add pause and a challenges or mission mode SUMMARY --------------- It is a very fun game. I even think people who never played the original will enjoy it. However, you need to determine if you want to pay a higher price for that experience. If not, wait for a sale. Me personally, I don't regret the buy.

This is a tough one. I flip flopped from positive to negative and back and forth and could just not decide. I did settle on a not recommended, and let me explain to you why. As you can see with my playtime, I have given the game a serious go and this negative review comes after a lot of thought, it wasn't just willy nilly. I was an Intellivision kid, and I have fond memories of this game - I once used it to get out of going to bed at my normal time. I said to mum, just one quick game, and was there for 80 minutes and begged her not to make me stop as it was going to be my high score (I knew precisely what I was doing lol). For those familiar with the original game, surviving for 80 minutes is no easy task, but I was really good at it. The reason I remember it so fondly is because my parents stayed up and watched the whole game with me and even got right into it and were making verbal cues throughout. I also remember how sore my hand was, cause you had to use the stiff side buttons to shoot. I went to bed with a blister. Let's get the positives out of the way: The music is outstanding. I LOVE good music during a shmup, and I almost gave it a thumbs up just for that. A truly epic score, and the track on stage 2 is breathtaking. It made the hairs on my arm stand up. It has true analog control for fine movements. There is a flip side to this though. All other analog compatible shmups will have the ship at the single top speed if you use the d pad for digital movement. Unfortunately, Astrosmash still has inertia and speeds the ship up every time you start movement, so digital control is actually a hindrance and I highly recommend NOT to ever use it. So controls are both positive and negative. The graphics are fairly decent, there are nice little touches like the volcano erupting, and little animations on the saucers as they get pelted with bullets. Invincibility move was a good addition and with the dash, a clever one at that because an issue with the first game was getting over to things in time. They at least tried to mitigate this. Now, as to why I am voting a no go. There is SO much wrong here and I don't want to write a novel, so will focus on the main points. Ultimately, yes, it's a crap game. Very overpriced at $22 AUD. This feels at most like a $5 AUD game, 2.99 USD. I mean that. It's not that the production values are bad, it's that the content is, well, kinda pathetic. Speaking of ONE problem with the production values, it's 30 FPS and you can FEEL it and see it the entire time. Just making this unlocked FPS or at least 60 would probably move me enough to give it a positive. Seriously, 30 FPS is pathetic. Sure, maybe that's what the Amico could do, but this is Steam. It's called updating it when porting it to take advantage of the target platform, especially if you want 15 USD or 22 AUD for it. There are 4 ships to choose from. Guess what, they all play identically, except the colour of their laser! What's the point? It's just the look of the ship that is different. Big woop. OK I get that this can be a 4 player game, so everyone can know which ship is theirs, but why not give them different weapons? This is akin to a fighting game and no matter which fighter you choose, all the special moves are identical. Why not be able to unlock some more ships AFTER completing the campaign, and have them with different attributes/weapons? Now, the first half hour of my 2+ hours playtime was me doing the first 3 levels with each ship to see if any differences, then quitting, then trying the next etc. The entire rest of my playthrough is just the one game. Yes, I finished the campaign on my very first proper playthrough and died just before completing the second loop. TEN levels, 3 bosses. That is IT. No changes other than making it stupidly hard. You would think, after a loop, that maybe a weapon unlock or something? That's the issue with Astrosmash. The basic pea shooter is so poor and useless on the second loop that unless you can get a power up, you can't DO anything other than dodge. So this shows you how poor the actual game design is. Just put 5x as many things on screen and make them impossible to shoot. Here's an example: There are these aliens with fire rings around them and not ONE can be taken down before they reach the ground with the basic weapon, not on the second loop that is. Yet they put 5 on the screen at one time AND they explode with a fire trail when they hit the ground, so without a shield or weapon you're toast. I actually think up to a quarter of the deaths were unavoidable, and THIS my friends is cheap game design. A game should ever only be about skill. Before anyone says "get good", I am 7th on the leaderboard after ONE play, so the others on the leaderboards are having exactly the same issue. The dash sometimes moved the wrong way even when I had the stick hard pressed the way I wanted it to go (i.e. the opposite of where it went). It wasn't a lot, maybe 5 times in the entire playthrough, but 3 of those times caused death. This needs fixing. What would get me to give this game a positive? That's the question I usually ask myself when I give a thumbs down. 1) More power ups. It's nice there's a couple there, but the variety needed to be bigger 2) Unlockable base weapons/ships 3) more levels before looping 4) 60+ FPS 5) Properly balanced difficulty rather than throw a ridiculous amount on screen and give the player no way of fighting them off. Seriously, by the end of the second loop it was getting stupid. It sort of turned from fun into not fun. I am all for a hard game, but trust me, if you have the basic weapon, it can be beyond ridiculous. Honestly, I would have rather one campaign of 25 levels rather than looping, with excellent difficulty scaling. Hard enough that it takes skill to finish it, and addictive enough with unlockables and such that one will keep wanting to play it to compete on the leaderboards. That's where I am with this right now, it just feels like a lazy bit of code to me that has been overpriced. The publisher has tickets on it, that's for sure!

Super fun game. Good visuals and music. Great to play with my kids or just to chill. Needs a pause button.

Weak sauce. This game is pretty amateur. The controls for even getting past the menu and into the game is ridiculous.....seriously, wtf. Some of these game devs are just wack.

Value of game: $14 Value of seeing a UFO smashed to bits by his own asteroid: priceless. Great music, good controls, fun graphics, can get tough later on.

love it!

Love this game! The graphics are good and smooth, even on a system that's not a gaming machine. The music is excellent! I'd buy the soundtrack if I could find it. Game play is fun and can get rather hectic but in a good way. This game is a love song to the 1980s, just enough nostalgia mixed with respect to the original but riffing off of the theme in a fresh way.

If you are a fan of the original, this is a blast to play. Nice graphics and music. Nothing complex about this game. Sit back and enjoy it.