Polynomial 2 - Universe of the Music Reviews

This game is amazing in VR. Played through what I guess is the tutorial (Launch?), and then fought a boss (very cool), was given a fourth weapon, and then was thrown into what I guess was survival mode? I ended up flying around while enemies spawned continuously, eventually the fourth weapon's ammo went from XXX/250 to XXX/750 to just showing 900,000-something ammo remaining. Just being able to spam bullets like that feels a little overpowered, but definately fun. The controls felt a little stiff at first, but then when I discovered that holding L2 lets you aim/fly wherever you point your head, things got really fun. I ended up spinning and rolling around in my desk chair in my room-scale play area, very fun. Near the end I felt like I couldn't die, I was killing things so fast and accurately, and moving so intuitively, but I eventually died and had to quit because the battery on my controller died, lol. The one critical thing I have to add is that it was never very clear what was going on or what I was doing. I'm assuming that the level I first started on was the tutorial since it told me the basic controls, but in VR, the notification text that popped up was not easy to notice, and I'm sure a few lines went by that I just didn't see. Overall, this game is lots of fun. The in-game music is pleasant and engaging, and the ability to use your own music files is a plus, and even though I didn't try it out, being able to use music from other apps on your computer (Spotify and the like I assume) is a great addition as well.

Im going to get lost for hours and hours within these mesmerizing music visualizations, A lot of cool music is included with the experience, and i love the ability to add my own music. The game/shooter levels did not catch my interest at all, but the music visualizers, especially the "Hex" was impressive. Is wonderful floating around to the music. I tried to use it along with brainwave entraining meditation music and found this to be a fantastic meditative experience. Polynomal was working somewhat like a light machine hand in hand with the brainwave entrainment music. PS. HTC Vive tracked controllers are supported. Its an "experimental" feature, but it works great. Need to enabled the controllers in options.

So far, I have to say I'm really digging this game. I was one of the first people to try out the VR implementation with my Vive. The game's psychedelic visuals are absolutely amazing in 3d with it wrapped around your head. Lasers from enemies coming flying out of the void growing as they fly towards your face. Even though its not cockpit based it controls and feels very similar to cockpit in other space games, just the way movement is set up and feels. This was a plus for me because it mean no VR sickness and I felt fine while playing it. This is a small dev that puts a lot of time and efforts into thier works, and it shows, as this is probably the trippiest space flyer I've played yet.

Is trippy man... This game has scenes/levels you can play to shoot at enemies and gain points and stuff. Just ignore all that stuff. Instead, enable the latest beta release: Steam Library > Right-Click Polynomial 2 > Properties > Betas tab > select the most recent beta. This will add better VR controls. Put on your headset and make sure to enable the VR controls as you see fit. Or just use a non-VR controller. Disable the sound effects and either load up your own music or set it to react to what you're hearing. Set the HUD elements to 0 too, no need for that. Head back to menu, ignore the actual game and head to "Screensavers" instead. Start up a scene and float around in hyperspace to enjoy an amazing psychedelic visualizer experience in VR with no enemies to deal with. Drugs optional. This game's development doesn't appear to be getting any traction and the controls are a bit tricky to get used to. But once you get it set up right it's cool as shit. Just don't play the actual game that's included lol.

Gameplay is very okay, no QOL - abandonware, but it looks very pretty if you stretch it across 3 monitors, best music visualiser I've seen. [edit] I am so enthusiastic about this Visualizer I got in contact with the developer who had to move on from this project to find a job which pays the bills. I expressed my enthusiasm for the game and my joy of the experience I have had so far and a few small qol things that I'd like to see in the game and some problems I had encountered but couldn't solve. He so thoughtfully and considerately replied to my email with fixes to my problems and solutions to the qol I was missing, what an absolute legend. <3

I developed a little pre-bed-time ritual the week after buying Polynomial 2. Putting on my VR headset, I'd fire up the game and continue the survival mode. After clearing out all but one of the slower enemies in the first wave I'd pick a direction with an interesting swirl of glittering spiral clouds pulsing in time to the music and accelerate towards it. The stardust flew by and blue comets blazed to life then fractured into fading pieces before disappearing from sight. The universe of The Polynomial 2 stretches around me and it's a peaceful, relaxing, and very pretty way to wrap up the day. Then I'd reload and blast through as many waves as possible amidst a storm of lasers and the geometrically-exploding particle remains of enemy ship-creatures, because who can resist one last torrent of neon lightshow streaming directly through the eyeballs before calling it a day?

Let me start by talking about Polynomial II's predecessor. I really enjoyed the first Polynomial, but not because it was a shooter. Awesome psychedelic graphics aside, what really drew me to the game was the nuanced movement system which demanded you "surf" along streams of particles to achieve boost, along with the bizarre relationship between passive and hostile space-creatures, some of which seemed to heal you or protect you. This, in concert with the interesting levels and unusual enemies (my favorite resembling the Chain Chomp from Super Mario), made for a fairly dynamic-feeling combat, even with just a single weapon for the player. Seeing Polynomial II, I was expecting all of that in VR, and nothing more. I was a bit disappointed to find somewhat less than I expected; My beloved particle surfing movement system had been removed, your only way of boosting now being to slowly saunter over to a flower (which seem to appear/disappear depending on the stage of a level and can be extremely frustrating to find). The map geometry felt a little less inspired than the last, although it was clearly still a magical place. The allied space creatures are gone, making it feel like the whole world is out to get you, which is of course significantly less calming. The targeting assistance reticles dance around madly with any movement keypress, making it frustratingly difficult to learn how to aim while moving, even for very large enemies. This was not the case with Polynomial, which had eye-popping explosions when a projectile hit the target instead of a large reticle telling you where to shoot. Your craft feels a lot slower than the first game, perhaps for the sake of VR, but it makes it a lot harder to enjoy the groove of the music and much harder to consistently dodge shots. This, combined with the difficulty of reaching flowers in combat, made for what felt like playing against a stacked deck. All you really can rely on is your ability to aim and kill enemies, and you don't get much choice because there's usually an obvious best order of elimination: Shoot the scatter laser enemies as they deal consistent damage, shoot the unmoving turrets, then shoot the dogfighters, keeping an eye out for missiles the entire time. I did, however, have a blast for about 5 minutes after I died and the game gave me near-infinite ammo and turned on Insane mode (huge armies with tons of enemies), until I realized that it was going to stay that way until I started a new game. I kind of wish there was a bit more feedback on where the player is in the game, Polynomial communicated this by bringing you to a new region and having a very slow buildup to let you get your bearings, but Polynomial II seems to have much tighter scripting so you usually get assaulted right away. Long story short, it feels a little formulaic and what made Polynomial really unique seems to be missing from Polynomial II. The tone of the game has changed and it is a little desynchronous from the amazing visuals. My wishlist for this game would be to speed up the player craft by bringing back the previous boost system, bring back the strange AI creatures, and give the hostile enemies goals that is not "always shoot at the player". The benefits of additional weapon types, new levels, revamped UI, and I'm sure other new features I missed does not feel like it measures up to these missing features. As such, I unfortunately cannot recommend this game simply because the predecessor feels more successful.

A great way to relax and just enjoy some excellent visuals and of course your favourite music as well. I wish there was an active desktop version of this as I sometimes rush to my games library and overlook this as a way to relax. I don't really play the game just enjoy the screensavers and free roam. Excellent program <3

EDIT concerns have been met, and review has changed** OLD POST** I have never reviewed a game publicly like this negatively, but this game is even worse than the first release of Polynomial. My favorite part of the original was being able to plug in my guitar and use the input and customization of effects to visualize my music. This version currently contains very near no customization or ability to rig up my guitar sounds for the visualizations. The gameplay is nothing similar to the first, but I was hoping and willing to contribute in hopes that it would be something better in terms of visualizations but it is actually worse than the first one in my opinion. OLD POST** ;; Edit: After talking with one of the developers I was too quick to jump to conclusions and was not aware of the customizable options available explained in the response to this comment. Also due to being in early access I would recommend disregarding the negative connotation of my review above and giving this a chance as it is still a work in progress, and does have capabilities now that I had overlooked. The change in visualization is more complex than i had imagined, and there are great things to come! Still my favorite visualizations; the most dynamic and interesting i have found on the net!

(First off, Completely disregarding the space shooter aspect, The Polynomial is the best music visualizer ever. Hands down.) The FIrst Polynomial was a visual treat, and the Polynomial 2 does not disappoint. Waves of color burst and pulse to the beat and melody of your music and it is incredible. I got lost in the first game for hours and hours just floating around to my music. I didn't play the first Polynomial as advertised... I played the shooter aspect of it for a while (I liked it a lot, and I'm sure for a lot of people that will be their main drive for playing it). But one day I realized that in all these levels there was all this cool stuff going on around me and I felt like I really wasn't a part of it. I wasn't really taking in everything that was going on around me. So I turned off the enemies and the HUD and BOOM... Now I realized why I decided to purchase the game. There are a lot of games on Steam where you look at the pictures of the game provided to you and you think "This looks really cool!" but then you play it and you're like "ehh, his isn't as cool as I though it would be". The Polynomial is literally the exact opposite of that when you take in what's going on around you and put your attention on it. The Polynomial 2 boasts improved visuals on every front and I'm very excited to see where it goes from here. I will say that I cannot currently fly around and enjoy the visuals like I used to since I am forced to have enemies currently... However, (and this is a very important "however") I have been in touch with the games creators and they have been very active in responding to my concerns to assure me that it is a top priority to make free roaming to your music a main feature in the game. Because of this, it gets my 110% approval. If you love listening to music, and/or love visualizers, you are King Silly of Sillyville to not have this game. And to whom it may concern, the space shooter portion of this game is great too in my opinion. But that's not what I play the game for so if you are looking for a review based on those merits look elsewhere.