Project Root

Projectiles from off-camera behind you make this game quite frustrating, no matter how good your reflexes, if you can't see the bullet, you can't dodge it. The game is not bad, but always having one eye on the radar and off the action to avoid surprise instant damage seems out of place for a fast paced bullet-hell shooter. Maybe some sort of warrning system that lets you know when an enemy behind you starts shooting, anything other than having to constantly look at the radar litterally every second.

Good old time shoot 'em up. Enjoyed playing it although the difficulty bar is quite high. The ability to constantly upgrade your ship gives it longevity. Controls are unique using mouse and keyboard which make it very intuitive to learn. Recommended as a blast from the past!

Anyone remember [i]Zone 66[/i]? It was one of my favourite top-down "sandbox" shooters from the early 90s. This game harkens back to that era, both in terms of difficulty and gameplay. Be warned that if you are not experienced at this type of game and in particular, twinstick shooters, even on easy you will find this game an exercise in frustration. It is quite unforgiving... - Missions last between twenty minutes and an hour and there are no checkpoints! Run out of lives, back to the start. - Power ups seem to drop at times when you either don't require them (two repairs when I am already at full health, really?), or when it is practically impossible to pick them up without being destroyed. They don't hang around that long either. - Enemies fire from offscreen, many projectiles will track you for a long time and later enemies lean towards a bullet-hell style. These traits combine to make the airspace very crowded and sitting still for even a moment will be enough to make you very dead. [i][b]This is where the game really shines[/b][/i]; the flawless control and responsive movement of your ship make it a joy to play. It is possible to avoid practically anything, using a good sense of placement and understanding from which direction the next salvo of enemy fire is likely to approach. Unfortunately, the lack of on screen prompts and lacklustre radar make this heavily reliant on the player's intuition. Irrespective of that, there is a real sense of skill and reward, both for careful and ballsy play styles. There are a decent variety of enemies that are slowly introduced as the game progresses. There are both air and ground targets, which need to be destroyed with an appropriate weapon, similar to both [i]Zone 66[/i] and [i]Xevious[/i]. Each enemy variant represents a particular threat and they do force certain responses to deal with them. When you get many types mixed together, the game is at its most difficult and hectic. There is an experience system that awards points at level-up. These points can be used between missions to upgrade your ship. However, even fully upgraded your fire power always feels underwhelming. Players are better off focussing on upgrades that increase agility; this is the main means by which you will stay alive! Throughout, the graphics are decent and manage to keep up a good frame rate on a mid-spec machine. Enemy designs are standard fare and borrow from just about everywhere, but provide good variety. Explosions in particular are pleasing to the eye. Sound is a little bland, but does the job. A few minor technical issues cropped up while playing... - I was unable to confgure my Logitech F310 gamepad. Trying to change the controls in either mode (XBox 360 or F310 Direct Input) just didn't work. I ended up using the default XBox 360 control scheme, which did the job. You are basically forced into a twinstick control scheme to make the game playable anyway. - Steam achievements didn't work. They are awarded as in-game medals, but the corresponding Steam achievement wasn't activated. - Enemies occasionally get stuck in the scenery and cannot be shot. Usually not too annoying, but once the enemy was an objective and I couldn't complete the mission. - I had only one crash to desktop in seven hours of play, which isn't too bad. [h1]In summary:[/h1]This is an enjoyable but slightly repetitive game that rewards skillful play and will be appreciated by top-down shooter fans who are [u]not[/u] looking for a quick fix.

The game itself is a lot of fun.. but playing it makes me feel sick, yes quite literally. The need to keep spinning/twisting around and around, back and forth - all the time makes me both dizzy and want to throw up. It's like one of those amusementpark rides that just looks so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tempting, but you regret getting on 30 seconds after it starts moving. Or perhaps I'm just too old and boring. I remember spinny, fast and hectic top-down games for snes/nes that were near identical to this and they never came close to making me throw up on my keyboard/controller. If it takes a lot for you to get dizzy or feel sick, you'll probably love it. The gameplay itself is good.

Action without pause and a lot of adrenaline. The ship control is very precise and the motion of rotation of the camera is just perfect. Love it!

游戏其实很棒，科幻版鱼鹰直升机咻咻咻突突突小游戏！ 推荐用手柄游戏，那样操作舒服点，键鼠感觉很别扭。 画面还不错，操作也算写实。就是难度略高！ 游戏应该一共有5个关卡（可能更多，但成就菜单就显示5个···）！ 地图广大但是任务提示不好容易卡关！ 我在第三关找目标找半天找不着北了！而且地图有空气墙~ 但特定范围内找到吐血了···都没找全！ 剧情对话是很小的窗口里的阴文对话框显示！ 字小比较费眼睛···反正我也看不懂~无脑突突突就是了~ 成就失效，游戏内菜单显示我解锁了成就，但实际成就却没解锁， 而且游戏菜单内的成就和steam成就数量不一致不匹配！

The first thing you need to know about this game is that it's been abandoned by it's developer already. They have stopped updating/fixing it for over a year now. I played for 4 level on hard and I must say i really enjoyed it. It's a arcade style Jet shoot them up using a neat little plane that shoot air and ground targets. There is a level/upgrade system as your gain experience. Not a very fansy bullet storm but you can move 360% and have quite a bit fun explore and shoot enemy. The graphic is pretty good and music is pretty good. The upgrade system is not too effective but it does help you improve. I only played hard but the difficulty is really not that insane compare to many other games out there. You do need to rest a bit after each level since the over whelming amount of spinning does burn you out. It's really sad to me that this game has been abandoned without fixxing the achievements cause many of them are really fun to get. It works in game but it doesn't link and work on steam. 6.5/10. I would give it higher score if the achievement is fixxed.

[h1] Project shovelware codename dig, dig, dig. Imagine starting the game and seeing not worst intro but then gameplay part starts... it gets challenging to even force yourself to play it. Then you realize after first mission it's not worth the hassle and your money got away with this game like a fart in mid-air. [/h1]

No wonder nobody likes this game or plays it. Super boring, you use the same 2 guns to shoot at endless guys that all look the exact same. Guys just continually come, nothing like endless respawning enemies to take any feeling of accomplishment out of killing or letting you relax and enjoy your work for a second........The levels have you destroying buildings, and going to points, that's about it. The barely there story sucks. And there are 3 lives per level, so even though the level is huge and takes like 15 to 20 min, if the endless guys that shoot homing missiles that don't seem to stop when they die or even after any reasonable amount of time, you have to start from the beginning, even if you beat like 5 objectives, almost if the developer didn't know to design checkpoints or levels. The guys just keep growing if you let off for a second and its impossible not to get hit by all the shots and homing missiles. Just stay away. Not really anything positive to say about it, other than the game actually works. 4/10

Project Root is sort of an open-area arcade shooter that feels like it came from the 90's. I was enticed by what I saw, bought it on sale, and merrily jumped in. 20-ish hours later (which was in Offline Mode and thus not displayed here), I was done waiting for it to become worth my time OR money. It's got a good arcade-y feel to it, the objectives are (most of the time) clearly marked, and the game DOES work as intended. HOWEVER....it is heavily marred, and I shall focus on those details. The English is sloppy. Even one as pedantic as I can forgive the occasional mistake, but this is pre-high-school level, and it grates on me. Some of this is presented in pre- or post-mission cutscenes that alternate between two ugly character stills and an uninteresting story poorly presented through text. The rest of this mess is given by all the text frequently sprawled across the bottom during the action. This is distracting at best, and often meant I had to back away from all combat to catch what was going on before the text rapidly vanished. And the controls....I don't know about keyboard/mouse, but I played this on a controller, and it was not fun. There is never a need to stop shooting. You should be shooting during the majority of the time. You need to be holding down a button to shoot. These missions are upwards of 20 minutes each. That makes 20 minutes or more of holding down a button more-or-less constantly, which gets uncomfortable, and the ensuing cramps disuaded me from that third mission in a sitting. But what about aside from that, what about the gameplay? Well, there are upgrades! Upgrades that don't necessarily explain what they do. "Elite kit: Rockets" doesn't tell me much. And these felt minor, easily forgettable, and like the points on "Whose Line Is It Anyway?"... didn't really matter. Honestly, the game should've just left out the upgrades altogether. The view feels too zoomed in. If you want to avoid getting shot from off-screen or rushing past an enemy nearly as soon as it appears, you need to keep your eyes OFF of the scenery and on your mini-map. The shooting and the dodging just don't feel GOOD this way. Now, some of you may like the idea of infinitely respawning enemies. Keep the pressure on as you go for the objectives, right? Well even that just feels clumsily done in Project Root. I found one of the spawn points. A ship appearing in air right in front of me, and another instantly appearing right in front of me as its predecessor died in fire. I should not have been able to see that. That aside, the constant enemy spawns are just an aggravating nuisance during the boss fights, which go on too long anyway. This game's graphics and settings are also subpar. It felt a little sluggish on my quite-decent machine, despite not looking the part of a modern game. Reducing the graphics settings yielded a result, and smooth play...but the distant background went from fog to black abyss. A black abyss that sometimes swallowed or spit back out varioius terrain features of this background layer, based on which direction I was facing. There's a difference between giving a game a more basic graphical style, and just poorly-executing your visuals. In short, if you want a budget version of a modern-day imagination of an older-style shoot-em-up that has a very open area, you could probably do worse than Project Root. There's a gulf, however, in between that and a recommendation from me. That gulf is hidden in a glitchy black abyss.