Nova Drift Reviews

relatively replayable, awesome style too, has the arcade type style to it without feeling all that retro as well. the gameplay though? its great. admittedly feels stupid at times, but aside from that it is just.. its perfect.

I love this game, been playing it for a while, had it in the beginning of early access. It's such a well designed game. The graphics are gorgeous and everything hits all the happy sensory buttons. The glowiness, the space nebula vibes, the popping explosion sounds, the creature inspired bosses, the easy controls (definitely better on keyboard/mouse, can almost play one-handed the entire time)... everything. The skill trees are so neat to play around with. Endless customization. You can go for strategic builds or just fun ones. Can't say enough about this game (Also i think it is easy entry. I am bad at games, i play very casually and sporadically, and even i managed to hit 1 mil score. Not a lot compared to some, but pretty significant.)

Great game and can be played forever with all the different builds you can make. Wish they added a workshop page for mods tough

Extremely fun game, lots of upgrades and combos to explore. You feel like a glass cannon at times, even with defense builds. Let's you feel powerful and weak at the same time, The endgame gets boring with level-ups being few and far between. Aside from that, the build variety and niche strategies lead to a replayable and fun experience, with each run feeling fun and unique. One note: read upgrades carefully, as some mods completely remove shields or do self-damage. I've accidentally died by taking self-damage upgrades without having any regen. 10/10 worth the price

It's very pretty, lots of explosions, and lots of [i]"variety"[/i], it's not a bad game. I just wouldn't recommend it. If you enjoy tight movement and gameplay that rewards skill, [b]DON'T[/b] pick this game up. As cute as the [i]"variety"[/i] is, it doesn't matter what shield or weapon you have, sh!t controls are sh!t, the luck of this rogue-lite is based on if the enemy/comet spawns on top of you, not about what you roll during level up. You don't get overpowered and want to quit the run, the enemies become bullet sponges and do insane damage, the laziest form of difficulty, and it plays more like a puzzle game then it does a rogue-lite. Just search "best builds nova drift" and then roll for those, no matter what--your run will end most unceremoniously. Games like these are supposed to support experimentation, but there are very clear strategies and they're incredibly easy to get to with the amount of rerolls--[b]but[/b] it's not [i]satsifying[/i]. And unholy dregs, who TF thinks playing a 20 minute round should result in [i]HALF[/i] a level? Ridiculously stupid, I'm gated away from experiencing the game in full because ... What? I need to get better at dodging comets that appear in a blink of an eye and I move at the speed of smell? 13 hours and I still don't have everything unlocked (sO MuCh cONtEnT 🤪). 13 hours of pretty explosions and being ended by some enemy pinballing me into another enemy/bullet/singularity/comet, such a waste of time.

Really fun trying out different builds, and there's tons to try out. Overall great arcade-style game to have fun sessions on.

I honestly can't believe I've played this game for so long and still haven't gotten around to writing a review for it, but here I am finally writing a review. I cannot properly express how good this game is. My 500+ hours of playtime should give you a rough idea of how much replayability Nova Drift has, but in case you need more convincing, this game is also still being updated, and chimeric isn't actively working on any other games as far as I can tell, so all of their attention is being focused on this game. Besides, it's only like $15. Give it a try. You have nothing to lose.

Game is kindof just bland. Graphics are flashy but actually pretty basic. The "mod trees" are very small (4 things) , and I think this was a missed opportunity to have an actual "tech tree" with interconnecting parts. Many of the weapons feels very underwhelming.

A lot of the complaints and negative reviews about this game focus on the controls. I read several negative reviews and they all said basically the same thing. After reading a comment (I believe on Reddit) by the dev, he said he wanted to pattern the game after the old, classic Asteroids game in preference to the 'twin stick' games people are used to today, and it seemed that was what led to the complaints. I had believed then the issue was generational and, being an old guy in my 50s I figured, no problem, I'm an old Asteroids guy myself, I can't handle twin-stick, this should be right up my alley! It turns out, I was dead wrong. This isn't a generational thing. This isn't twin-stick vs classic. This isn't Asteroids. Let me re-iterate again, I owned and played the original Asteroids at home and in the old-time arcades with real-life quarters. I owned a Pong game machine and a Commodore 128, I know me some Asteroids fella. And this ain't it. I still play RTS games and have some reasonable dexterity and micro, so it's not an age thing either. This is a truly bad, or at least tragically difficult, controls thing. Yes you can reset key bindings, and I did, several times, trying different layouts. It didn't matter much. The problem is, there are too many things you need to control, that you end up needing two hands to do it all, which, I mean that makes it a twin stick anyway! It's just a worse version of it. Whether your hands are on two sticks, or one hand on your arrow keys [i]and[/i] another hand on WASD, that's two hands, that's twin stick, just on keys. Secondarily, the controls are [i]extremely[/i] touchy, and jumpy. When I say jumpy, I mean jumpier than a virgin on prom night. Holy smokes. When you start moving forward, you're going at Millennium Falcon levels of speed. I dunno how many parsecs it is but good lord is it uncontrollably fast. The other issue is, you can 'warp' through the edges of the screen but the enemy can't - it screws with your brain when you go flying through a wall that the enemy bounced off of, right in front of your eyes. It just makes no sense and when you're as uncontrollable as you are in this game, it just makes it 10x worse to regain control. The last semi-negative (and I will get to some positives) is the upgrades are not really clearly explained. I am sure it's a learning curve thing but, nobody likes playing through their first time and not knowing the mechanics in the slightest. For the good - the game is damned fun, when I can control my ship. I [i]want[/i] to love this game. It looks freakin' awesome, it has great audio and sound, the visuals are incredible and it just feels like there's the makings for a great bunch of runs, fails, and fun. :edit: turns out I [i]did[/i] refund this game, as much as I hated to do it. Reason being, beyond the abysmal controls I came to finds that although there are three branches of upgrades for your ship, (engines, shields, weapons) upgrading the shields to become weapons themselves far out-balances the other builds (making them almost useless) and make control much less important. It just breaks the game. maybe I'd get better with controls but, it won't change the balance of the game, or, imbalance. My recommendation though is, carefully consider the controls. It really is as bad as the complaints say. It's not an age or style thing, it's rough. And I get it, it's a choice or style by the devs, and this is nothing personal, I wish you guys continued success. However these controls are an absolute travesty, bordering on criminally bad.

Before purchasing I was hesitant, as a few reviews called out the ship controls. I'm very glad I did purchase, as the control thing is not a bug or a poor design, rather its a fantastic modern take on a classic arcade game "Asteroids" and it's ship control scheme. Works perfect on Steam Deck.