REVIEW : Space Raiders in Space (PC)
Defend and survive in various places across the galaxy against the hoards of aliens that used to be your partners. The gameplay is basically broken down into 2 timed stages. The first is travelling and building while the second is the action.
During the travel phase, you search around for weaponry, materials, and blueprints to increase your odds of survival. You also will conduct repairs on your defences and build new defences based on the elements and blueprints you have acquired. Blueprints are either static protective fortifications like boundaries and ground protection like a tesla coil. Once you have set your defences you can either trigger a fresh wave or let the timer bring on the wave automatically.
During the action phase, all hell breaks loose and the waves of bugs slam into your defences and your team who are provided with melee and varied weapons. You can pause the action and issue orders and to make it easier you can issue global orders for your whole team.
The narrative mode is just that, when you complete a level in the story mode you move on to unlock more of the story. You linearly gain crew and equipment. There is full voice acting and of course, comic book cut views.
In RNG endless mode you will be regularly given arbitrary drops that will give you characters, equipment, material, or designs. You will also be allowed to leave and go to another map taking with you the upgrades and characters you have before found.
In RNG survival there is only one map and you have to hold out as long as you can.
Features
- Story Mode with full voice acting.
- Multiple RNG “Issues” each with survival and continuous modes.
- Leaderboards.
- A sense of humour that does not take itself seriously.
Graphics and Sound
The artwork, for the most part, is a gift, the whole play has a comic book aesthetic. This both works for the game and a bit against it. The weapons all are unique in their animations and the call-outs and voiceovers for each character are fun.
The voice acting is good. I think when there is an annoying character voice acting it is intended. Again this goes back to the game not taking itself seriously.
Value
The price to benefit ratio is great for the play. With the various issues for the RNG modes and the full narrative mode, you are going to get a great amount of playtime. If you enjoy unlocking, and leaderboards this will only intensify the value of the play. It’s a good value at full price.
Criticism
In general, your roguelite order and metagame as well as decisive decisions, are bound. Yes, there are various weapon types and levels but this is the most significant progression. On the identical token, I would have liked to see more stats for the bugs. But that might just be me.
The complete adherence to the comic book art form has some problems when you bring it to the interface there are even jokes in the game about redesigning the UI for simplicity.
