First and foremost, AstroViking is an arcade-style, bullet-hell shooter. If you are into those games, you will probably be into this one. While this game does look simple at first glace, there is a surprising amount of depth to it, something that I personally haven't seen in other games like it (I haven't played many arcade-style games, so that's might be why). Either way, you play as a little viking girl that has 3 simple, yet necessary abilities: The ability to shoot lasers (which is your main form of attacking), the ability to dash in the direction you are facing (which does damage to enemies and grants you invincibility frames during the animation), and the ability to set up a vortex wherever your cursor is (which vacuums all the enemies together and does a slight amount of damage). Using these abilities, you're trying to shoot and kill waves of alien-like creatures in what looks to be a space arena (which is just a big square with 4 "rocks" that you can hide behind).
After killing all the enemies in a wave, you have the choice of healing HP and/or upgrading your abilities via a skill tree, both requiring you to pay points that you get from killing enemies. During my longest playthrough of the game, I found myself pouring points into the laser attributes, but by the time I got to about wave 15, I felt the need to spend my points on upgrading my vortex (which helped me with crowd control) and dash (which helped me escape barrages of bullets). My only complaint about the skill tree is that there are certain nodes that have 2+ other nodes branching off of it, and you can only select 1 of them. While I understand it's to balance the game and get you to spend your points in your other abilities, I would have enjoyed, for example, being able to upgrade my laser's damage and shot speed even further, considering I got to a point where I wasn't spending my points on anything after a wave (aside from the occasional HP restoration). Nonetheless, upgrading your character and restoring your HP after an intense round felt very rewarding. There were times where I had just a half of a heart left, and I would barely get by the wave. After upgrading my character and restoring her HP, the next wave would give me almost no trouble, and that felt really good.
The game starts out incredibly easy, but after wave 10, the difficulty spikes and goes way up after each passing wave. Every 5 rounds, there is a boss wave, where you fight more (and sometimes new enemies). The new enemies are mostly just palette swaps of previous enemies, however their bullets get faster and harder to avoid. Speaking of which, the enemy variety isn't huge, but each one has their own unique way of firing bullets at you.
As for the aesthetics, I really enjoyed the game's graphics. I was most impressed by the particle effects, such as the electricity on the enemy spawning points, and the leaves and northern lights in the distance on the skill-tree menu. Your character, the enemies, and the bullets contrasted very well with your surroundings, so you won't find yourself getting hit with a bullet you couldn't see. The music, while the game only having 2 songs right now, is also a pleasure to listen to. My favorite aspect of the music is how the main theme's melody plays while you are fighting enemies, but only the background instruments play after you beat a wave, making it sound much more relaxing, as if you're taking a breather.
My only real complaint with the game is that the Mac version does not have a fullscreen setting, so I sometimes found myself clicking outside of the game window during waves, which almost got my character killed a few times. Other than that, as someone who isn't the biggest fan of arcade-shooters, I had a really fun time playing this game. The skill tree along with the difficulty scale kept me playing the game, and I can't wait to play my next run. Also, there are leaderboards (my high score is 31, try to beat me)! So, with all things considered, I believe I can recommend playing this game to pretty much anybody. I thought it was very well worth the $3 I spent!
Things I wish to see in potential future updates:
-More music
-More skills on the skill tree, such as more laser effects (burn damage? freeze effect?)
-I think a "No Upgrade/Healing" mode with its own leaderboard would be cool
-More unique enemies, possibly enemies that only appear during boss waves?
-More abilities w/ their own skill tree (such as shield, ways to deflect enemy shots, etc.) that could replace vortex or dash if you didn't want to use them.
