I picked Particle Wars up on a whim months ago during a Steam sale (I think), and it has been sitting in my library ever since. Today I decided to download and play it.
Is it fun? Yeah, it's a decent experience. It's about as fun as it looks in the videos, and the level of challenge is pretty balanced. The weapon variety isn't much. I found myself gravitating towards the three-bullet shot while I played, since it provided the most spread given how inaccurate the bullets seem to be. I might have had more incentive to use the other weapons had they been given as upgrades during the game rather than just selected in a menu before each level.
You can definitely tell that this game is cheaply made, likely by someone still learning how to create games. It's cool that they've reached the point where they can make something like this, but there is definitely a lot of room for them to grow as a developer. In this game in particular, the performance is pretty shaky. There were a lot of moments where the game slowed nearly to a stop for me, about once every few minutes. The game is still playable given what it is, and since it slows the entire game rather than skipping frames entirely it doesn't impact your performance, but it is a bit irritating.
The music comes across as royalty-free electronic music that was downloaded off of some database somewhere. I'm not sure if that's actually true, but it got a bit grating after a bit. Thankfully there's an option to turn it off, so it's not too big of an issue. Luckily, the rest of the sound design is decent, with some crunchy sound effects that make it pretty satisfying to shoot enemies.
The graphics are nothing special. There is a LOT of particle usage here, to the point where it gets distracting. Whenever you shoot an enemy, a whole wave of shiny particles comes flying off of them, and at first it can be really hard to distinguish between these harmless particles and actual projectiles or enemies flying toward you. Thankfully, it doesn't get too long to get into the groove of the game and learn how to tell them apart.
This game is SHORT. There are six levels and an infinite mode, with no other content as far as I can tell. Technically there are 15 achievements, but I unlocked all of these by simply playing through the six main levels and attempting the infinite mode once. All in all, it took me about half an hour to play to completion.
This is including my first playthrough, during which I got to level four or five, then went back to the main menu briefly to look for options, only to find that I had lost all my progress because I hadn't clicked the big "Save Game" button on the level select menu. During my second playthrough, I clicked it a few times, just to see if it worked, but got no feedback. I'm still not sure it actually did anything, since I beat the game and closed it. That said, losing my save data wasn't such a big deal since it doesn't take very long to beat the first few levels again.
So, is this game worth buying? Well, probably not. There are many other games out there that you could get for the same price and play for a lot longer. That said, do I regret buying this game? Not really. It's fun for what it is, and if you think it looks cool then you'll probably have some fun with it for a little bit. If you really want to get this game, go ahead. It's a dollar, so it's not like you're throwing away money. This game is decent, and I don't regret playing it.
Final rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
