Astronimo Reviews

Astronimo is simply a fantastic game if you can actually gather the equipment and friend group to play it properly. It works both solo and with two, but I've found that the real goofiness arises with 3-4 players. We've tried playing on individual computers over the internet, at which point we had some trouble with Steam Remote Play Together, and we've played on one couch with 4 controllers. Positives: + Challenging and varied levels that require creativity in contraption building. + Game looks good and music is nice. I sometimes listen to it outside of the game even. + The visuals does a lot of things right when it comes to communicating the different depths, contraptions, physics, danger, goals, player position and actions, etc. + I have no problems with the audio cues and sound design. + There's just the right amount of friendly fire to make plenty of funny moments when you accidentally kill your friend, and that one friend that likes to be violent in games can ground slam the whole team if they want. + There's enough to do even outside the normal workshops and challenges, from trying to get hold of coins in difficult to get to places, just flying around with rocket engines, to music instruments enough for the whole gang. There's even a challenge to playing the instruments correctly somehow. Some gripes: - It's sometimes confusing to know what buttons you have to press to achieve certain things. When you are in the main menu and trying to add more players, they have to hit the start button on the controller twice or something, but if you press A instead, the user interface still responds.. Just the player isn't added that way? - When playing many people playing on one computer screen, the camera is a bit weird sometimes, but I guess it would be almost impossible to create a camera that wouldn't mess up in any way when there's so much on the screen at a time. - I see a lot of the other reviews mention the arm controls. I find them fine, but there's this mechanic where the game tries to determine if you are trying to swing yourself or if you are trying to lift an object. Depending on which action the game thinks you are trying to do, the controls are opposite. I personally believe people would find it easier if the controls worked like if you were swinging yourself. If what you were swinging yourself from was static, then you would lift the avatar up, while lifting something up is the same as just pushing yourself into the ground. - The tutorial world is a bit slow.