TL;DR: Give Vermitron a shot.
When most people think of twin-stick shooters, they think of raw micro mechanics. Disciplined aiming, shooting, and dodging, instead of careful, methodical thinking. Tibor Fobel embraces the later, fabricating a retro and tower defense hybrid. The result: a solid, old-school action game that deserves more attention.
Vermitron follows an intrepid astronaut, defending an endangered flower from invading insects. Player's progress level-to-level, descending further into an infested base. Winning a floor is simple: blossom your flower by collecting three watering cans. However, hungry pests will be squirming to your base, so you'll have to defend your plant along the way. Slaughtering worms and flies is easy. The trouble comes when picking up a watering can, which spawns a wave of insects. You also become slower, barely moving faster than a grub. Without a base defended by armed towers, your flower will be easy pickings as you travel back.
Traversing a map's floor requires careful risk management. The deeper you travel, the more opportunities for cash and vital watering cans. You'll also encounter safe spots for power plants, which energize guard towers. On the flip side, opening rooms will activate more enemy spawners during invasions. This means searching without a plan can jeopardize your headquarters safety. Balancing what sections to enter grants a modest yet gratifying learning curve. Among the carnage is an array of unlockable weapons and secrets to discover. Extras like explosive RPGs and treasure rooms help keep the game fresh. Yet amidst the praise, some factors hold Vermitron back from perfection...
While tough at first, the game becomes painless, even rudimentary, once understood. Levels can become effortless by keeping the right doors locked, barricading nearby threats. Enemies have predictable AI and are generally slow. Ranged attackers can be a nuisance, but their scarcity diminishes their danger. Increasing enemy speed during invading waves would keep the game challenging. And instead of mindlessly moving, insects could always move toward the flower. Faster and smarter enemies would keep the game fair yet more challenging.
However, the game's primary issue lies in the randomness of watering can placement. Unlike enemies, watering cans spawn in random locations in each level. This can lead to awkward games, where watering cans will be too close or too far from your base. One time I even had two watering cans manifest next to each other. I’m fine with randomization for the main objectives, though it would be nice to have some consistency. Coding watering cans with pseudo-randomness could resolve this. For instance, a level's watering can always spawn four rooms away from your base. Player's would know what to expect, but still be cautious of their route.
An overly-forgiving shop system also undercuts the game’s sternness. The three-hit health bar becomes meaningless when medical kits are cheap and unlimited. Money itself becomes easy to hoard, since the shop has less than ten permanent items to buy. If you continue a run, you also keep all the cash you had left. An alternative approach could be making money less common or partially reset on a new level. This would make each run be more strained and continuing runs less lenient. Of course, if the difficulty becomes too hard it could be adjusted in the settings.
Obtaining weapons is also counterintuitive. Because all unlocked weapons stay in powerups, you cannot buy them in the shop once available. That's unfortunate, as Vermitron offers many diverse weapons to use. If someone earns a gun, it feels good to use it immediately. Not wait for an occasional powerup for trying out. Thus, making weapons buyable would grant player's more freedom and enjoyment.
I've talked a bit about bonus weapons, but what about the primary ones? The default gear are pesticide cans and bombs. Pesticide is your primary means of elimination, being infinite and effective. You could win the game only using pesticide, though its short range means you have to get close to fight.
Bombs are my particular problem. They're advertised as valuable versus groups, but you aren't able to use them at a distance. Many times I hurt myself when using bombs, either due to the explosion or proximity of enemies. Without baiting enemies into them, bombs had little combat benefit. Instead, their blast is used to find items and secrets between rooms.
There's no issue with bombs as utility, but they could be better fitted for combat. A quick fix may be letting bombs be throwable. Players could hold down the bomb button and let go, with the throw distance based on holding time. Fast taps would drop bombs where the player is standing. This would make bombs more fun and straightforward to use.
Moving away from firearms, let's talk about the tower-defense side. There are only two types of towers to build, excluding Power Plants. Area-of-effect Bomber towers look nice, but rapidfire Sentry towers are superior. Tower defense setups become simplistic when the best strategy is pure Sentry. Along with new towers, adding a visual indicator for attack range is imperative. A circle displaying how far a tower attacks aids player planning. By adding weapons and new tower options to the shop, players make more meaningful choices.
My last gripe with Vermitron is its backtracking. It's absurd how players have to spend money on a minimap and base teleporter. For an arcade game, playing should be fast and polished. Having to spend tons of money on navigation that could have been spent towards action is lousy. A mini map that reveals previous rooms should be a given. Players should be able to teleport anywhere and anytime, except during insect invasions. And teleporting should also be energy-free, since you don't spend player energy. Finally, when not fighting enemies, player movement speed should be increased. This would significantly lower the downtime of the game. Enter the Gungeon is a great example of streamlined action gameplay. The developers should not copy Enter the Gungeon, but gamers expect slick gameplay.
Despite the criticism, Vermitron holds up as a good arcade shooter. To give credit where it’s due, the dev-team gave an update after release which fixed some major issues. A notable change was making watering cans a manual pickup. Before the change, waves would start when your character was next to a watering can. Now players have the initiative to choose when to fight. Quality of life features like this are proof of an improving dev-team.
I was able to beat Vermitron after about five hours and over a dozen floors (albeit using continues). For eight dollars there is a lot of game to be had. And if you're into speedrunning or high scores, the game's replayability doubles. I would recommend Vermitron for those wanting a quick and challenging old-school game. It's a little rough in a few areas, but provides the clutch intensity a gamer is looking for.
