Super Hexagon is certainly a game that exists, and it has since 2012. I just don't even know why, but it is.
Graphically, the game is very simple, and for good reason. I already struggle to keep up with it as-is, and I don't think I could play it if anything more complex were added. The reason for the problem is that it spins like there is no tomorrow. There is the problem of those black bars on the sides if you're playing widescreen, but it's not a dealbreaker, in my opinion. Each difficulty also has its own color palette, which is a cool little detail.
I do have to mention that I'm not sure how good the game is for those with epilepsy or who suffer from motion sickness. I don't have either issue, but even my head hurts after maybe 15 minutes of play.
Someone left the spin cycle on "Super Fast" again, didn't they?
Gameplay-wise, it's exactly as you see in the gif. Use left and right inputs from various options and avoid running point-first into walls. You can touch the sides of the walls without losing, so you're save from hitting a wall that's already passing you. If you hit a wall head-on, the run ends and takes you to a summary screen. From there, you can push Space and be right back in the action after a short lead-in. There are three initial difficulties: Hexagon (Hard), Hexagoner (Harder), and Hexagonest (Hardest), with three unlockable difficulties if you last a minute on the original three: Hyper Modes of each, which are even harder.
The standout thing is the soundtrack. I really like it, and each level has its own track. What is probably the best part is that the tracks don't start at the beginning of the file each time. Instead, there are predetermined points in the track that the game will start from at random each try, so you don't have the problem of hearing the exact same part of the same track each time. It will get repetitive if you struggle for long enough, but I think the quality of each track and the differing start positions definitely help in making that less of an issue.
Overall, I do have to question the $3 price tag. It is polished fairly well, but at the end of the day, there isn't much gameplay. Yes, the gameplay that is there is certainly engaging, and the game is fun, but there isn't much to it. I honestly believe that, not counting the quality of Adobe Flash itself, there are many better Flash games out there that are free. The soundtrack files are readily available in a data folder in the game's install directory, so if you can snag this for $1 and you really like the soundtrack, it may be worth it for that.
Starbound hit its 1.0 release July 22, 2016. I had it from Early Access for a decent amount of time before its full release. I want to talk about it.
Just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm going to warn you ahead of time of a few things:
I like mining, building, exploring types of games. They aren't best-of-all-time for me, but I do like the genre.
As mentioned 5 sentences ago, I had the game in Early Access, so my thoughts on the Early Access version will affect my thoughts on the full version.
I play on Linux. I may have experienced bugs or performance issues not present on other platforms.
With that out of the way, lets get started.
It's so Pretty!
Graphically, the game is very nice. The pixel art style is one I'm getting annoyed with because of how often its used, but it is done beautifully here. Most, if not all, sprites and effects are very nice, and the backgrounds are also great.
The game is definitely nice-looking.
Musically, I can take it or leave it. The music quality is okay, and it fits the basic idea of a space exploration game, but not the tone Starbound specifically sometimes sets. When you have the few friendly NPCs spouting lighthearted dialogue or you see the penguins in the central space station hub of the game, it's a little weird, in my opinion.
Sound effects are good, generally. They aren't exceptional, but I don't remember any off the top of my head that are specifically bad. I do get annoyed with the effects that play when you run out of energy or fully recharge it from empty, but that's because I hear them very often.
Performance is generally good, with exceptions. It's not common, but I have gone down below 60 FPS enough times for it to be of note, and the biggest issue seems to be when collecting a liquid or when I hover my mouse over the giant gate behind Esther, the main questgiver. The gate thing is particularly bad, dropping me from ~60 to the low teens.
Check the top right to see that cinematic 11 FPS.
At first, I was going to complain about the UI, but in reality, I think the issue is more about the use of the UI, rather than the UI design itself. Your inventory has 5 tabs, each with 40 slots, each tab dedicated to a category of item. Towards endgame, I almost always have the crafting materials, blocks, and food tabs full, since there are so many materials and types of blocks, and food doesn't stack. The hotbar is two sets of 6 pairs of item slots. Each pair acts as a left and right hand set, and you can switch sets with the X button or an icon in the top left of the hotbar. I have two main gripes with the hotbar. The first is that the pairs aren't all that useful, thanks to two-handed items taking both slots. Every object that is placed in the world, such as torches, take both hands, even if they don't make use of the right click for anything. The way the pairs work means that it's possible to only be making use of half the hotbar, which is a common occurance thanks to two-handed weaponry, blocks to place, torches, etc. The other complaint is the switching of sets. You are never told that you can do it, and it adds a step to accessing things you may need to access quickly. I've had a lot of times where I go from my general use set to my combat set, but need to place blocks, and it takes me a lot longer to do so than if I were using a more standard hotbar.
The current hotbar. That icon in the top left is the "switch item set" button.
And finally, the worst part about the presentation: The story. It is painfully bad, both in its writing and objectives. I actually like the missions parts, since they take you to somewhat unique locations, but everything else is very, very bad. In order to progress the story, you will be required to find settlements of each species and scan items at each one. While the primary selling point of the game is exploration, mandating it with a scavenger hunt that is hosted by RNGesus immediately shoots the fun of exploration in the foot. No longer are you exploring to find anything that may or may not exist. You're filling a checklist, and a boring one at that. And your reward at the end of the story? The absolute most pitiful excuse for an ending ever. I genuinely feel like my intelligence has been insulted by it.
It should say something that my favorite part of a story in a game about exploring a procedurally-generated universe is the stuff done on premade maps that are fairly heavily scripted.
Wow, okay, harsh. How does it play?
Not very well. Movement is average, largely because it's hard to screw up movement and the tech abilities aren't good. The most creative tech ability is the morph ball distortion sphere, which puts your character in a small ball that can fit in tight spaces. Otherwise, you have a few lateral movement abilities (dash, sprint, short range teleport) and some vertical ones (double jump, delayed high-movement double jump, and a quadruple jump with almost no vertical height). Each category can only have one at a time, so no, you can't dash into a sprint or do a normal double jump into a series of smaller jumps, ending with a rocket jump.
Combat is thoroughly unsatisfying. Melee barely ever feels like I'm doing anything because of an immunity period enemies seem to get at the end of a combo, and ranged combat is absolutely unfun because it uses the energy system instead of ammo. The energy system means that you can't make use of your ranged weapons for a few seconds if you run out of energy, since it only "unlocks" after it fully recharges, which means you spend around a third of the time of combat either switched to your melee weapon or waiting for your energy to regenerate. Endgame is really the only point of the game where I feel ranged combat is even slightly enjoyable.
Crafting is even a downside in this game. To explain somewhat, I need to explain what I consider passive and active crafting. Passive means you can set it and leave it, like Minecraft's smelters. Active requires you to remain in the menu to craft, such as Minecraft's crafting tables or basically any Terraria crafting. Got it? Cool. Literally everything you can craft in Starbound is done with active crafting, which wouldn't be bad if it weren't for the wait times. Yes, you have to wait in the menu while you craft. Just queued up 1000 (max stack size) glass to smelt? From what it feels like, you will be waiting around for 500 seconds (it feels like it crafts 2/second), You can't queue up other things to happen when it's done, and you can't just leave the menu. You have to sit there the entire time and wait for it to be crafted. A nearly 9 minute wait just to craft a bunch of glass is unacceptable. Any other game would make it passive or instant, and for good reason.
I'm putting this in its own paragraph for the emphasis: I crafted about 700 fired clay, thanks to wanting to do something after having collected a crap ton of clay blocks while mining. It took nearly 6 minutes of real-time waiting, and I have the video evidence to prove it.
"Surely exploring in a game where the biggest selling point is exploration would be good, right?" Have you been reading this review? The answer is no. A large part of the problem is that every planet and biome feels like a reskin of another. There are many structure designs and environments to see, but the functional difference is basically nonexistent most of the time. And the moons suck. Ever wanted to be chased around by an invincible monster that instantly kills you on contact? If you answered "yes", congratulations! You may get your wish by collecting literally any amount of fuel on a moon.
He's coming for that booty.
You can also do miniquests for NPCs in settlements. These are usually "Go here, kill some things or talk to someone, come back", but you may get lucky and get a "collect some stuff and bring it back mission", which is AMAZING (/s)! Occasionally, when you finish a mini questline, the NPC will offer to work on your ship. Get enough crew members this way, or by hiring them in the hub location, and you can upgrade your ship's size. It does nothing except give you more space and allow you to hire more crew members, since your ship is only really useful as a mobile home base.
One step forward, and a train ride back
As I've said, I've played this game back in Early Access. In my opinion, the game has actually regressed in quality from its earlier versions. Nearly every aspect of the gameplay was better in some way. The hotbar used to be a more standard 10, plus a dedicated pair of left/right hand slots. If you were holding something that was one-handed, you would automatically equip the right-hand object as well, meaning you could have a one-handed melee weapon in one slot, a pistol in another, and a flashlight in the right-hand slot, and always be able to see what you're doing without putting the flashlight in multiple spots.
An example of the old hotbar.
Planet exploring used to be slightly better, too, mainly on ice planets. There used to be a temperature mechanic, where you could explore a cold planet, but you needed to use heat sources to not die. Even on non-frozen planets, night could get cold enough to make use of the mechanic. It even took into account heating from the planet's core, so the deeper you went, the warmer it got, and the less you needed to worry about freezing to death. This was removed in favor of a version of the system we have now, where you need an item to survive on a planet with extreme temperatures.
Your ship's SAIL used to have some personality. Yeah, it wasn't exactly what I'd call "good", even on a charitable day, but it added a somewhat unique feature to each race outside of the looks of your armor, ship, and items that can be placed.
So, to summarize
I don't think there's a single thing this game does, outside of graphics and audio, that is done competently. The combat is unfun, the exploration is shot in the foot by a lack of things to find, the story is outright insulting, and even the crafting is bad. Basically everything done by Starbound is done better by other games, including earlier versions of the same game. I cannot recommend this game under any circumstance outside of if you can get it for free, and even then, I wouldn't waste my time with it.
Satellite Reign was free at Humble Bundle recently, so I picked it up. And now I've beaten it. I have thoughts I want to share about it, so here they are.
I'm going to preface this with a few things, first, so you know where I come from with this review:
Top-down games aren't usually my style. I'm more of an FPS/RPG dude, and while this game does have RPG elements, namely XP, skill points, currency, and a variety of items and upgrades, the base gameplay isn't something I actively seek out.
I play on Linux. There may be some issues I have that you don't, simply because the devs focus on the Windows version more. Just be aware that some issues I may mention may not be in every version of the game.
I personally value gameplay above everything else by a very large margin. I don't care about story, graphics, or audio unless they are done badly enough to impede my enjoyment of the gameplay or they are good enough to enhance it.
Presenting: The Presentation!
The story is fairly minimal, and isn't anything to write home about. A company has developed technology that allows people to respawn, like in a video game, and your task is to travel between the city's four districts, gather experience, gear, and upgrades, and kill the CEO of said company. Short, sweet, and provides an in-game excuse for your ability to respawn. Once you finish the tutorial, though, you are given the story very rarely. You get a short message when you first enter a new district of the city, plus one when you reach the final area of the game, totaling maybe 6 total messages. Even for me, that's very little, but I'd rather too little than too much.
Graphically, though, I think the game is fairly good. Enemies of the three factions are easy to tell from each other, thanks to their armor being solid red, white, or purple. That also means that they are easy to tell from the environment, if the health bars didn't spell it out enough. I find it difficult to tell lasers and bullets apart from each other in a firefight, but if you have the time to tell the difference, you aren't in a situation strenuous enough to need it.
One of the best things about the game's presentation? Its explosions are pretty.
The soundtrack is fairly good. It doesn't stand out at all, but they definitely have the right style of music to go with the sci-fi style of the game as a whole. It also has the nice feature of changing tracks on the fly to fit whether you're in combat or not, so you have the higher-energy track during the higher-energy parts, and a lower-energy one while you explore the city or are sneaking around a restricted area.
The sound effects are also good, but my god. I don't know if I should consider the cacophony of sounds during a firefight a good or a bad thing. It gets loud and definitely chaotic, to the point where I had to turn my system volume down a notch or two for comfort, compared to where I normally have it. Good for getting across the idea that you are in DEEP, bad for your ears. Yeah, let's leave it at that.
That's all well and dandy, but how does it play?
The game is unique, I will give it that. You control four characters in a top-down view of the world. Think XCOM, but real-time instead of turn-based, and not tied to a grid. You go into restricted areas, get your characters into a heavily guarded room, get out, and wait for the heat to die down. Of course, this means you have a mix of stealth and pew-pew choices, and you can actually go from one to the other fairly easily, or even mix the two to an extent. If you want to kill a guard, you can sneak behind them and deliver an instant-kill execution shot, which only alerts other guards if you are spotted or using an unsilenced weapon. You can also start a firefight, which will only alert other guards if one manages to get a call out for reinforcements or they are close enough already to hear the gunfire.
The way the game handles interactable objects is very nice. Your Soldier and Hacker can each interact with certain things, like consoles, for various effects, like locking a door. There is little more satisfying than pulling off an infiltration by turning the sentries against their owners, running through the door to the objective in the chaos, and disabling it from the other side to keep the enemies away for a little longer. I mean it, the interactions in this game are genuinely cool to make use of.
The variety in weapons and upgrades is fairly small, but still what I'd call good. There are a decent variety of gun types, and there are also three categories those guns fall into: Ballistics, Laser, and Plasma. Laser and Plasma excel at different things, while Ballistics seems to be the middle of the road type. There are also a good amount of different kinds of gear and augmentations. You do have limited space to carry all this stuff with, though, so you have to make the choice of what you value most and on who. Does your Infiltrator get that immunity to poison or the fast recharge on their energy for more frequent use of the invisibility cloak?
You like the idea of setting up an explosive, throwing a grenade that keeps the sound from getting out, then exploding the now silent bomb on a door to get to the other side? That's a thing you can do.
All that has a caveat, though: The AI is rock stupid sometimes. The pathfinding is a bit odd, occasionally sending someone at a dead-end that never was a valid path. You also can't be sure that your characters will even be able to hit an enemy, since they don't seem to be able to tell that the pole right in front of them is in the way, and will keep them from hitting the guy 30 ft away. I've actually had characters go down because my Soldier took their rocket launcher and launched that rocket a grand total of 5 feet ahead, where it hit the barrier a friendly was sitting behind, destroying the cover, the friendly's health, and any semblance of strategy I was using.
You sure THAT'S where you want to have an explosion, man?
The issue I have above all others, though, is that your progression is generally limited to "You can do the same thing as you could, but better." Your hacker can be upgraded to hack into people's minds better, which allows them to do the same thing, but to higher-tier enemies. Your Soldier can be upgraded to rewire higher tier transformers. Your Infiltrator can stay invisible longer or deal more damage with their katana. Your Support can use their scan-vision thing with a larger radius or heal more at a time. Other than giving one character the abilities of another, that tends to be it outside of equipment, which isn't class-limited. While, yes, the game introduces things like sentries and mechs, the end result is that you end up doing largely the same things over and over again. Most infiltrations past a certain point amounted to getting my Infiltrator in, equipped with the tool that lets them hack using the Hacker's skill level. They go in, deal with the guards and cameras, then open the door for the friendlies to join in, rinse repeat until the job is done. It didn't matter if I got spotted because everyone is combat-ready, so I can hunker down or escape if need be.
Performance Anxiety, eh?
This isn't going to be long enough to warrant the heading thing, but I do consider it important enough to point out with one: The game does not run well whatsoever. I recommended it to a friend, and they couldn't even play the game at an acceptable framerate when it was calm. I was usually hovering between 20 and 30 FPS, with heavy action dropping the game to the teens, along with needing to keep my browser at one tab to keep the game from taking up too much RAM.
The game is heavy, even at the lowest possible settings. Do not expect great framerates unless you have a computer with seriously impressive specs.
It's also a bit buggy. I've had the occasional character clip into a building, and there's a fairly annoying bug/oversight that happens if you have too many characters hacked for direct control. The game seems to only be able to give a certain number of characters the ability to reveal the fog of war, so if you exceed a certain number of controlled characters, you may end up having to control others without being able to see enemies they may encounter. That is fairly bad, but it didn't happen often enough to be an issue, largely because I'd keep most of my characters in groups, so I'd at least have one person with vision in each group.
You see that blue dot in the top middle? That's one of my characters not providing vision. They're supposed to be providing vision.
We need that number score! What is it, man!?
I'm not going to give this a number score. I'd rather you read through this whole review because it took forever to write that will tell you more than a number score ever could.
Overall, the game gets a decent recommendation from me. It has enough unique about it that it stands out, assuming you can put up with the performance issues. The story is basically nonexistant, but the graphics and sound are good, with the gameplay being really satisfying when you can pull off the tasks you need to. It does get repetitive, thanks in large part to the way the game handles progression, but it does have enough unique combinations of how things are laid out that I could barely notice it.
