Helium Reviews

[h1]So, WTF is Helium?[/h1] Game synopsis says: You are the liaison astronaut on Vega 237 spacecraft. Somehow, all crew members are dead and you are alone trying to figure out wtf happened. Goal seems to be establishing the "signal's nature", whatever that means... [b]MY TAKE:[/b] It is a pseudo walking simulator with some basic FPS shooting. You wander around, exploring. Well, more like go where the dev wants you to go. You try to figure out why you're alone in an unknown planet. Then... as you explore, you find dead astronauts and some have notes. You try to survive against the enemies that world throws at you: squid-like jellyfish aliens, some tiny UFO that shoots electricity, black jumping goo, astronauts shadows and the "last boss", a floating black shadow astronaut. Eventually, you do find a "hover bike" that increases the pace much more. Sadly it doesn't last long! The controls are quite wonky too. The landscape truly gives you "50 shades of grey" pun intended ;) , as that is the main color you see everywhere... beside some dark grey, white and black. Some green leaves from trees... The music goes very well with the ambiance and I'd be interested to get the game soundtrack as a DLC (free would be very appreciated). The "last boss" is very B I T C H Y. [h1]PROTIP: Hit the white orbs floating around him with your 'assault rifle' and hide behind the big rocks.[/h1] Once you do "beat" the game, there seems to be a survival "horde" mode, where you try to survive against those squid-like jellyfish aliens but the thing is, you aren't armed but can only use fist. And with the slow [b]AF[/b] running speed, that mode is totally pointless. You don't even know what to do. [b]CONCLUSION:[/b] Overall, an 'okay" kind of a game. Great ambiance and music without a doubt but the controls aren't intuitive. The checkpoint system is too spaced between eachs. Increasing their frequency would help "skip long portions of walking back to where you died". WORST is the movement. You cannot run longer than 3 seconds. Takes 10 seconds to cooldown too so makes it pointless. You cannot jump higher than a sidewalk border. Clearly, these needs to be addressed for another game because that truly kills the gameplay. I've skipped the jumping "puzzles" since I kept falling down from lack of running speed. That is the kind of game that have some good and bad elements. I'd hate to not recommend for an indie developer but again, I just can't get myself to recommend this game to anyone. I'll leave it at "YES" because there is some good to experience and I do hope ROCKETSHIP improves upon this project and makes a better game later on. [i]At 5$, this ain't bad for this strange indie production.[/i]

If this was a beta or even alpha game I would give it a lot of credit for what they've done. However, calling this a finished game with version 1.1 is a reach, a very far reach. The game has a lot of bugs still and the direction you are meant to take is not clear. I understand there are some elements of a puzzle game in this but even so it's hard to tell if something is a bug or a puzzle...

I like to give games the benefit of the doubt. I really do. The one thing I can say I found interesting here is the atmosphere. Pretty sure someone watched a lot of sci-fi and decided to make this. Now, I got this cheap and thought maybe is not as bad as it seems. But the other reviews are right. Controls are terrible, level design is poor, story/presentation is weak, gameplay can be boring/frustrating. I needed to find walkthroughs and cheats to go through this game, because I didnt want to spend time figuring out how to bypass bad level design. I read all the recordings and didnt get the achievement for it (maybe its because I flipped the cheats on, but other achievements did pop). I really think the people making this could have spent some more time polishing it. I mean, to make the sprint button work properly at least. A lot of people who get these type of games are very forgiving/understanding regarding low budget projects. They forgive the bad graphics, translations, sounds, limited gameplay options, etc. But at the very least you could try and make what you have work well and smoothly. There is a difference between trying to go through difficult sections cause you need to figure out stuff and going through games because the design is flawed. If I would have at least been able to easily get the achievements I would have given this a reluctant thumbs up, but otherwise...... Look, save yourself the trouble. Unless you really like what you see in the screenshots and want to walk around among it, do not bother. 2/10

I would recommend this game to staunch fans of FPS or Sci Fi who can overlook some shortcomings and limited budget. Although I enjoy it, I could see many people being disappointed with this game's fluctuating level of polish, from one section looking "pretty good" to another looking extremely rudimentary and cheap. Graphically the game is the equivalent of the Seinfeld episode where Jerry is dating a woman that looks great sometimes and horrendous in others. "Woah, bad lighting!" The game's quality early on can fluctuate wildly between abstract, kind of cool / creepy space station interiors to incredibly bland, drab, grey, generic outdoor environments with boring canyon walls reaching high above you restricting much sense of exploration. The minimalistic look of the alien architecture, weapons, and enemies is refreshingly unique, but some of the early outdoor environments are incredibly sparse (and bottom-line "cheap-looking") so it's hard to care to continue exploring more of the game initially, but I'm glad I did. Wandering down desolate, rigid, grey canyon walled areas on foot (sidenote: WORST sprinting stamina of any FPS I have played, your character peters out after taking about 3 sprinting steps- maybe the air is thin on this planet?) early in the game is admittedly boring and looks pretty bad, but it's not long before you discover more enemy types, weapons, and a [spoiler] hoverbike (though I'm not sure if this only appears in certain sections of the game as I haven't yet completed it) [/spoiler] which increases your mobility and seems to open the game up drastically. For better or for worse (I think it matches the game aesthetically but mechanically could be annoying..) the HUD is very minimal, which matches the game's overall design better, but if you say forget to pick up a key or item next to a body you passed in order to unlock a door in the next area, good luck discovering where it was that you had passed it, the game does very little to tell the player where to go beyond hoping (you have no map or pinging UI indicators) they happen to select the right path, not that I want blinking bells and whistles directing me to and from each objective, and I admire its minimal approach, but I could see this being a hassle if you were to miss a key item and then be forced to backtrack through previously explored areas very often. That being said, the game does a fairly good job of funneling you along toward the next area you're meant to explore. The game's sound effects and music seem well done, and some of the environments and technology (warp gates, doors, weapons, etc) are sleekly designed, however the outdoor environments inbetween can be awash in mediocrity. [spoiler]Why are half of the trees green and the other half are grey so early in the game? There seems to be no story purpose for this thus far and seeing the disparity between them is jarring and seems rushed / cheap. It may be explained later in the story, as there are allusions to some 'terraforming' plot but eh, it looks pretty bad at the very start of the game...[/spoiler] The screen seems to tear a little bit and your graphical settings in game are limited to "Medium" or "Low". That's it. To its credit, it has reliable, full controller support (I use Xbox One controller) with logically-placed buttons (reloading, jumping, and ADS buttons are mapped to X, A, and LT respectively..) Early on I had been thinking the game was unique despite its seemingly-limited polish in certain areas, but that if it didn't change up what it initially presented too much I could see myself becoming bored, which I'm glad to say isn't the case, with it changing things up often enough through enemy variety (weird floating Silver Orbs*, squid things, shadow dudes..) and other effects (floating through strange wormhole like tubes in one area, a rainstorm during a later level, etc...) *The Silver Orb enemies lead to me getting stuck in a "one-shotted death loop" from an autosave at one point, where the game had autosaved and I was being killed within 2 seconds if I didn't move from the enemy's attack. I was able to get around this and progress but it was still a nuisance, and these enemies seem to be a one or two shot kill on the player with a 100% accurate attack every time. I think you have to keep your distance from them and sneak around them, but in the case of me running into an autosave and then the enemy immediately doing this attack it created a frustrating gameplay loop. Although the game started on a pretty piss poor note and at times it can look pretty sweet one moment and then turn around and look like hot garbage the other, what is presented here overall has a unique, abstract aesthetic with cool, strange enemy and weapon designs. The game is distinctly unique amongst first person shooter games I have played, despite its obvious budget restraints, brief moments of this game have been more memorable than entire campaigns of others in the FPS genre for me as of late, so despite its "lower production value" compared to more ubiquituous publishers' titles, I look forward to completing it.

No settings: can't change mouse speed, vsync, etc. Annoying: lots of empty space to walk through with very few uninteresting enemies here and there. Also, the "puzzles" are not intuitive. No fun: automatic interactions, shooting doesn't feel good, melee doesn't feel good. Not even worth the 1 buck I paid for it...

I cannot recommend this game. It does a poor job explaining the game mechanics and its a technical mess; the audio doesn't always sync with visuals, the enemy ai automatically knows where you are but have no attack animation so you can't tell when you're getting hit, the sprint mechanic is god awful because you don't know how long you can run the the speed increase is barely noticeable. The biggest flaw is the fall damage; you can die from just jumping... I'm not kidding j recorded this (At the 6:22 mark is when the particular fall damage event occurs) https://youtu.be/tRsxt_3SGIs

This might be one of the most boring things I've ever installed on a computer. It is so bad, I don't think the dev ever played it themselves. I'd just speedrun it but sprinting only gives something like 20% speed boost and you can only sprint for 2 seconds, and the levels are too boring to just stand it until you find a gun

The game is interesting in the first place due to unusual performance. Graphics are made in gray tones, which additionally creates an atmosphere of unreality of what is happening. There is a feeling that actions take place somewhere on another planet. In addition, it is interesting that the game implements an old school approach to the plot: you can spend half an hour trying to find a way out of the current situation. There are no pointers as to what to do next, you need to think for yourself. Also atmospheres add by well-chosen soundtracks. In general, for a low-budget game is quite good!

Just no. I genuinely can't understand how someone could recommend this. This was an absolute waste of 2 hours. Gameplay is bog standard, you walk from one end of map to the other and shoot the 3-4 different type of enemies. Checkpointing is poor. Controls are poor. The sprint button barely registers at all, and if you're lucky enough to start "sprinting" you'll enjoy a slight increase in speed for all of a couple of seconds. Level design is awful, forcing a lot of boring trudging across the ugly, ugly landscape. I think the developers knew it looked hideous because your options menu is limited to two choices - graphics low or graphics medium. No high! The colour palette is parade of boring grey, spattered with the odd bit of greenery. The "fantastic weapons" tally to a total of 2 weapons. One of which you only get half way through and you will not use. The pace is glacial, even for such a short game. You get to pilot a hoverbike at one stage. Normally this would be a good thing. But it controls like absolute arse to the point where you stay off it as much as possible. The story is very meh, and the one bit of voiceover in it is laughable. There's amateur and budget productions and then there's this. That price tag is an insult. Avoid like the plague.

I don't review games much, but seeing as this game has few reviews, I figured I would put my 2 cents in. Pros -Cheap -Short (took about 2 hours to beat) -Weapon swap animations -Soundtrack is fitting Neutral -Story(Nothing super impressive but I can appreciate it) -Gunplay(I found it enjoyable but others might find it less so) -Vehicle segment(Once again thought it was good but thats my opinion) -Boss fight(its alright) Cons -Screen tears -Frame drops in a few areas -Only 2 weapons -Options are not readily available, but are there -Checkpoints in certain areas are lacking or can be sequence broken In order to change the games volume, resolution, and FOV, press F1 in the pause menu or main menu. In order to delete your saves, press F12 at the main menu Found that in a read me in the games files. But at the end of the day, I would recommend this to anyone who wants to play a short sci-fi shooter for 5 bucks.