[h1]Quite polished retro-styled shoot 'em up.[/h1]
[i]Disclaimer: Developer gave me a free key for review purposes.[/i]
A simple shoot 'em up, in [i]Space Climber[/i] you go about a small level and shoot the constantly spawning monsters in hopes of diamonds. Reaching 20 diamonds finishes the level.
While shooting and avoiding getting caught or shot by the mobs, you also have to worry about finding ammo and oxygen. If you run out of ammo, well, you can't shoot the mobs. If you run out of oxygen, you [i]die[/i] horribly and silently, because there's no sound in space.
There is sounds and music in [i]Space Climber[/i] though, and they do their job fine with pew-pew effects and several adequate arcade tracks.
[h1]Increasing complexity[/h1]
Each of the 30 levels introduces a new enemy or level feature or sometimes two.
There's slow and fast mobs, various shooters, shielded mobs, and some can shoot or move through walls or have other special mechanics. Shooters include the basic damage dealers but also ones that lower e.g. your oxygen or ammo levels. It gets rather complicated in the end.
The first levels with just a couple enemy types are easy-peasy, and you hopefully learn the mechanics that accompany you through the game (i.e. about ammo conservation and oxygen). If you survive to the end of the level at full health, you get a fancy gold medal and a special achievement for that.
However, with new mobs and features each level, gold medal isn't always a cake job. I needed dozens of tries to even beat some levels for the first time: this is not an easy game off the bat. Prevailing needs practice, which is a sign of good game balance.
[h1]"Unfair" randomness[/h1]
In the end, it was the only thing that sometimes annoyed me. E.g:
- A mob spawning near you when you can't move
- Fast mob suddenly turning corner and hitting you
- Shooter unleashing (they shoot apparently at random) at short range, impossible to dodge.
- Fire or slime trap activating randomly right when split-second picking an item from its tile.
With practice, it's possible to avoid the situations that can lead to potentially dangerous randomness. I can see it being annoying for many others though.
[h1]Tiny bugs and other technicalities[/h1]
In my playthrough, I experienced some minor bugs, probably to be fixed by the dev in the near future.
Initially, the game didn't launch, giving Steam Error 51. Turns out [i]F-Secure Deepguard[/i] was preventing it from launching. So watch out for that, though also my copy of [i]No Man's Sky[/i] was afflicted by this.
My wishlist for lacking features includes a restart level button (useful when trying to get gold medals and a single hit ruins the run) and a button to return to level selection screen. Currently, the pause menu is just a pause screen without other possible interactions.
There's also no sound or music controls.
Just a word of caution, the color schemes on some maps might be difficult for the eyes [i]if afflicted with color blindness.[/i]
By the way, I only tested the 2-player co-op mode once to see that it works. There's no online multiplayer, but you can use [i]Steam's Remote Play Together[/i] for that if local play is out of the question.
Finally, a word about controls. They cannot be remapped and are slightly unconventional. For moving and shooting on keyboard there's arrows+L (player 1) and WASD+Q (player 2). Or you can use controllers (tested with XBox One Controller).
[h1]A good arcade-style game[/h1]
Beating the 30 levels for the first time took about 8-9 hours, and golding them and consequently getting the 100% about 12 hours, playing solo. That's pretty good value for a small game like this.
I both enjoyed and sort of hated it but in a good way (see "unfair" randomness).
I'm told that bug fixes and leaderboards are on the way. However, the game is fun, challenging and otherwise complete. I think the price is also very affordable.
[url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/9997062/]~Twistorian Curator~[/url]
