Akka Arrh

So I got this game on sale for a modest five bucks, and I'm going to be honest, with the quality this game is at, that should be the default price. Don't get me wrong, it's not the worst game I've played, but there are several little "quirks" (if you can call them that). First off, there's no guide on what controls to use at first, and the controls you're supposed to use aren't particularly intuitive. You aim with arrow keys, not WASD or mouse. This eliminates the possibility of playing on one hand, which seems quite silly considering you only have directional keys and two abilities (not counting the standard bullet mode). Though, giving this game the benefit of the doubt, it is trying to emulate that "arcade vibe," so using one hand to move and one to press that big ole space bar does seem like an intentional decision. However, what doesn't seem like an intentional decision is the aforementioned second ability. When an enemy "attacks" your tower, it doesn't actually immediately do damage to your health. Instead, it goes to a lower layer that you need to go down to in order to defeat the enemy before it drains your health. Here's the kicker, if you play on keyboard, the glyph is just straight-up incorrect in the tutorial that teaches you this ability. It says it's mapped to "R2," which would be the right trigger on a controller. Naturally, I thought it wanted me to swap to my mouse to press right click on there. No luck there. Instead, what it's actually mapped to is the "page up" button next to the arrow keys. Going down to the lower layer is also just straight-up not fun in my opinion. I feel like I'm putting a pause on the actually fun part of the game to do a micromanagement sim. If you're gonna go retro, go proper retro. Give me low HP that drains normally, make me feel like the stakes are high. The final issue I had may be more of a problem with my system, but every now and then, the graphics would just completely freak out. I have attached the specs to this review to show that I am running on a laptop with a pretty dang good graphics card. There are so many games of this type that are much cheaper as their base price, are made by independent developers, and function correctly. Mycocosm is $4, Nodebuster is $3, Nebulock is $3, the list goes on. The only reason you'd purchase this game is for polish, but that seems to be nonexistent.

Things I liked: -Cool, trippy, flashy, retro visuals and sounds that feel like a flashback to 80's arcade games -Interesting mechanic of defending your ship and randomly "going downstairs" to protect the inside of your ship (at least I think that's what the concept is?) Things I disliked: -Some of the visuals are way too flashy, I had to disable the visual effects in the options -Each level has its own tutorial with tons of text on the screen. Is this game just one long tutorial? It feels like it keeps introducing something new, pausing the action, and forcing you to suffer the entire time. -The game still feels confusing to play, even after going through the poorly executed tutorials. -The overly wordy tutorial text is difficult to read with all of the flashy visuals going on. -Some of the in-game voices and sound effects are annoying -Did I mention I hate in-game tutorials? Playtesting during development would have eliminated the need for annoying tutorials. Bottom line, I am not going to refund my money out of respect for the developer. I might go back to this again to see if something "clicks". This is definitely not on par with Tempest or Polybius and I don't recommend this game.

This is classic Minter. Do a thing and your brain gets rewarded with sweet, sweet endorphins. If you miss the days of being a 1970s-1990s arcade rat and instinctually going for high scores then you'll feel right at home. Except you can sit down and play this game; it's quite nice.