Update: I requested (and received) a refund for this game. This is honestly the first time I have ever requested a refund on anything. I sincerely hope the developer works to patch this game and make some much-needed improvements. My original review follows:
When I read in the description that this game "follows in the footsteps of...Alien Breed or Shadowsgrounds," I was super-psyched. The two Shadowgrounds games and three Alien Breed games are my favorite top-down shooters of all time. However, my excitement quickly gave way to disappointment and, after about 70 minutes of play time, I cannot in good conscience recommend this game. There's a lot of potential here but the game feels like an unfinished late-alpha or early-beta release.
The setting is good (if unoriginal) and the beginning of the story is somewhat intriguing (if uninspired) though I don't think I played long enough to evaluate how any of that pans out. Even so, it's hard to care much because of the horrendous voice acting. The ship's AI seems to have more emotion than your character does - you seriously sound indifferent that the ship has crashed and the rest of the crew is likely dead.
The controls are clunky from the get go and movement is terribly slow. There does not seem to be a way to run - the control for "dash" causes you to roll forward, like an evasive maneuver. There is very little to interact with in the environment - what you can interact with will be glowing, including pickups, computers, door controls, etc. Not sure what to think about weapons. You start with just a pistol but you find weapons components along the way, yet there's no indication what they do, if anything. I did not play enough to find and try any other weapons. There's no inventory management at all - the few items you can have are displayed in the HUD.
Another criticism is the save system - you have one save slot, regardless of which difficulty level you play. There's simply no excuse for that in a modern game. I should also mention that, in just over an hour, the game froze twice, forcing me to kill it and restart. I could go on and on about everything that's wrong with this game and how disappointed I am but I think I'll cut it short. In conclusion, this game has a ton of problems. It's a combination of being unfinished and bad design decisions. The game most definitely needs some severe patching but even that won't fix some of its issues. And it will certainly never rank up there with Shadowgrounds or Alien Breed. NOT RECOMMENDED.
