Null Drifter Reviews

Null Drifter's greatest strengths are its music, sound design and best of all simplicity. It's an incredibly easy game to pick up and play, due in major part to its retro-styled approach to gameplay. This game sneaked under my radar until now and with the way it's going will probably make my best of the year list. And for only seven bucks and basically playable on any system with Windows 7 or up? Hell of a freakin' steal.

The art's what really drew me to this game and it wasn't disappointing. The progression system isn't exactly to my taste personally, (you replay the game to unlock permanent upgrades rather than having them all at the start, which makes me feel like the early runs are less meaningful) but a lot of people like that system. Either way for the price the vibe, soundtrack, and the art are totally worth it, and gameplay-wise, being able to dash through enemies to damage them also provides a fun twist to the average twin stick.

extremely well made and rounded game, the visuals, the music the gameplay are all so responsive and satisfying once you get into it.

The ultimate Jedi tester: for every 20 milliseconds, differentiate among 20 slow moving circles you are supposed to ignore, 15 static circles you are supposed to collect, 100 fast-moving circles you are supposed to dodge (some of which are coming from off-screen), all of the same colour, and plan your next move, 'cause your life literally depends on it. Your midichlorian count had better be high enough to see through time and space to execute it. Amidst that frantic chaos, the soothing music keeps telling you to chill and not fall to the dark side, but it's hard, man.

Early days, but so far am absolutely having a blast. Fun game play and great upgrade system.

lo-fi sort-of asteroids where the game starts off slow, and as you progress gets more fast and frenetic and crazy . There's a bunch of visual options ( screenshake, chromatic aberration ) can be disabled, and then there's a ton of game palletes ( think downwell ) it's done very very well. The visual presentation here is very appealing - and that's part of the reason why i dig this one so much. The game is simple, you can only shoot, move and dash ( and you can dash-kill most smaller enemies - this s important ) you progress through levels, after the level ends, you fight a boss - and are rewarded poweerups like bullets up, fire rate up, life up -damage up, etc - and as you stack more and more, things get insane. after so much has been done, you seem to unlock more items, and such like more color options for the game and i found shotgun - a new bullet type that spreads and adds more bullets ot the normal pea-shooter attack. every ;evel increases difficulty, and by the time you hit level 10 the game " really begins " adding new enemy types, and more challenges, and the enemies get stronger - and have more life - so dash killing ecomes your best friend. 1 dash can take out a foe that requires a steady stream of high damage bullets. also also - you collect money - and that is part of the determining factor for your score on the leaderboard. you can use that money to buy upgrades to start the game with ( which makes leaderboard a bit iffy, but once everyone ismaxed out on upgrades, it'll e solid grounds ) love this game - highly recommend you grab it.

Very simple but you get your bang for your buck out of it. The negative/positive space sometimes makes it hard to make out projectiles but the permanent progression system makes losing not very frustrating. I'd recommend this title, especially for its price point.

Really fun, fast paced, arcade goodness. Handles great and def gets you sucked in to keep making runs to see how long you can last. Music is pretty chill too.

Quick score: 4/5 Notes: Extremely fun twin stick shooter, but also extremely light on content. I effectively 100% the game in only about 45 minutes. Once you have seen all the game has to offer it just turns into a regular score attack arcade game, just see how high you can go. IMO 7$ is a bit much for what is on offer here, but I personally really enjoyed the hour of playtime I got out of it. I also got it on sale though, not sure how I would feel if I paid full price. Screen effects are a bit extreme, but thankfully can be turned off. You can also choose a color palette that you prefer.

[b]Introduction[/b] Null Drifter is an endless 1 bit twin stick shooter with dashing and procedurally generated levels. For such a minimalistic game the visuals are quite well done. It is a challenging game especially at first because you start with a very weak ship with the level end bosses having bullet hell patterns. You'll have to grind for about an hour to max your ship. There are some graphic features like chromatic aberration and bullet screen shake that make the game look much better but a bit harder to play. You can turn them off which is both good and bad. I personally would have been ok if it was enabled for everyone, but I seem to play better with them disabled. [b]Gameplay[/b] Try to destroy all the enemies as soon as they appear to not having to dodge their bullets. The most effective method is to dash into them. Every now and then destroyed enemies leave bonuses which will upgrade your gun or give you extra health points. You can not have more than 10HP. Key to survival is to collect as many of the bonuses as quickly as you can by not letting any enemies leave the screen. At the end of each level there's a boss. There are a couple of different ones, they get harder the further you get. [b]Controls[/b] If you don't have a controller connected you can play with keyboard + mouse, if you have a controller connected you can only play with that. I would have liked the option to be able to play with an one handed controller + mouse but the game might be best played with a dual stick controller anyway. You need an analog stick to dash accurately which makes keyboard + mouse the lesser choice of the two input methods available. [b]Conclusion[/b] It's a fun little game I enjoy a lot and it taught me how to dash properly. I've been neglecting that feature in other games, I just didn't care for it before. I will never care for grinding for coins and buying upgrades in an in-game shop though. I find scoring a bit odd, it's your level highscore x 1M + your coins. At least it's original, but I would have preferred just points or in order of when the level highscore was reached. I do find it annoying that at the end of your game you can pay to get more bonuses the next game, which means you can't just restart when you make an early mistake but you either have to continue or let yourself die. The extra bonuses also don't carry over to your next game session so every first game of a new session you play with less bonuses unless you let yourself die first :( [b]Video[/b] Here's a recording of me reaching level 25: https://youtu.be/H7emiDux7hY