ANIQUILATION Reviews

This game is a lot of fun so far.. I'm eager to get into it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7xwrJtXc90 This game suffers from something a lot of modern indie arcade games do and that's piling up different systems and controls seemingly just for the sake of "it's the 21st century, and no one wants simple arcade games anymore." But that's what made them great! You got just a few movement and powerup options but the real refinement comes in the gameplay, the speed, the logic, and of course the art and music. Not piling on extras. Compare this game against the game it's somewhat inspired by or at least looks a lot like -- Super Stardust HD (PS3, 2007). You had three shot types there, a bomb, and a dash. Yet it was as fun as could be and is replayable to this day because the gameplay was tight, fast, and basic. You get a couple shots, a couple moves, and then your hand-eye coordination carries the rest. In this game, as you can see in my video, I start struggling more as the game keeps introducing different systems of defeating enemies. Slashing small ships or bullets into other enemies or buildings, OK, that's not bad. But slashing buildings into enemies is incredibly tedious since there's no good visual indicator of where these buildings will go or are going, you have to try and notice some little black circles. And why have this anyway? Why can't I just shoot, dash, and shield my way to victory? Skills over frills. Then after defeating that boss we start out on a level where I have to navigate ice and lava rivers while holding both shield and dash in order to collect all the something something cubes and come on now. We're off track here. This isn't particularly fun, it's busy work. Depth for the sake of depth. Which is a shame because it's a pretty good game at its core. The movement is a little sluggish and I got stuck on geometry issues a little too often, but the game has a solid base and decent graphics. It should have leaned into being a tight, fast, basic arcade game instead of having a story, being level-based, and watering down the mechanics with too many ideas. 7/10