Alpacapaca Dash from Publisher and Developer Synnergy Circle Games
Alpaca runner with freaking laser beams shooting out their mouths.
Alpacapaca Dash is a side scrolling endless runner.You play as an Alpaca sent to save the Alpaca World from Eternal Darkness by running around shooting a laser beam from your mouth to destroy the evil darkness and restore the world.
There are 2 modes in the game, Easy and Hard Mode. Easy has auto-aim enabled which turns the game into a 2 button game; one for jumping and one for shooting the laser. Hard is where the challenge ramps up as you now have to add aiming into the run. Just like most endless runners, the game has you running on a set track at a set speed. All you can do is jump and shoot while the character moves for you. We would have loved to have a little control over the character as some of the jumps felt impossible to do correctly. We did figure out that you can run off the edge of the platform and jump right as you start to fall to get a little extra distance on the jumps.
While running around you will find items that will benefit or hinder your run. Items can give you a save for missing a jump, power up the laser beam, or cause you to lose all of your upgrades. The items are easy to see but sometimes hard to pick up or avoid as it all depends on timing for your jump.
While running on the platforms, your Alpaca starts to bring color back to the dark world. Running past dead trees brings them back to life. You will also collect coins during the run which can be used to purchase different skins as well as a “coin power up” bonus. Once the power up has been purchased you will find sacks of coins as well as treasure chests to collect.
There are a total of 11 different Alpaca skins to purchase. Some are a simple color shift while others add a little extra by changing the color of the Alpaca, adding a hat, tail, and changing the laser beam color.
Overall we enjoyed the game. It was good for pick up and play once we got used to the timing on the jumps. It also has several easy achievements.
Alpacapaca Dash is available on Xbox and PC. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Artifice: War Tactics from Publisher and Developer Silvine Games Studios
Enjoyable turn based strategy game with quality of life features that make it accessible even to gamers new to the genre. RNG item drops and quest rewards make replaying the game a different experience every time.
Artifice: War Tactics is a Turn Based Strategy game with roguelike elements. Taking place in a medieval fantasy world. You play as the leader of a conclave working for Sirion, the last of the relic holders, standing against Theosus, a self-appointed tyrannical God-King. As leader of the conclave, you will send your rebel champions on missions to overthrow the false god.
There are 12 champions that can be gathered. You start out with 3 Champions, Ranger, Pyromancer and Zephyr. As you make it further into the game you will be able to add other champions to your party. Each Champion has their own movement and attack patterns with varying ranges. This aspect, coupled with their varied abilities, adds to the strategies you need to learn in order to advance through the territories. Understanding what each Champion can do is a big part of the game. The Champions can be upgraded with new abilities, items, and by leveling up their default abilities.
Similarly to Champions, each enemy has their own attack and movement patterns. You can analyze these by holding the spacebar after selecting an enemy. Hovering over enemies also allows you to see their attack pattern (which lights up when they move). I really enjoyed the fact that I didn’t have to guess if moving my Champion to a new position would cause them damage, where the damage would be coming from, or if it would put me in a position to attack one or more enemies.
Each territory has one of a few different battle types. The Escort game mode involves moving a bomb as if it is a 4th character (you start with 3 champions in your control as default). Ambush involves preventing enemies from reaching your starting positions either by killing them or using skills such as Behemoth’s “Enroot” or Zephyrs “Concussive Blast” to push enemies back 1 tile (this can be upgraded to pushback 2 tiles). In Capture mode you must damage the “Shade” until it collapses and then touch it to capture it and win this mode. These are some of the main quest objectives that must be completed to advance.
In addition to the main quest objective, there are also optional objectives that don’t have to be completed to get credit for successfully clearing the quest. However, completing them will grant additional rewards at the end of the mission so they’re worth shooting for. This was an interesting game play feature as you could get a victory without killing all of the enemies on the level unlike many other games in this genre that require defeating all enemies every time.
There are 3 island biomes to complete and 1 final boss fight. Each of the biomes have their own hazards to watch out for like Sandworms, Frost Wraiths, Poison Ivy, and Floating Runes. The hazards can be used for your benefit if you are skillful as attacking an enemy next to a hazard will cause extra damage but be careful, they can also be to your detriment if you get caught in the Area of Effect.
Customizing your heroes using items picked up in battle, or earned after defeating a boss, can help you overcome specific enemy types. Not every item grants purely positive effects, some have negative effects too, so you’ll have to decide if the tradeoff is worth it for you and your playstyle or the type or enemy you’re trying to beat.
Overall, I enjoyed the game. The visuals were spectacular, especially the champions themselves (So much so that I wish you could spin them around in the loadout screen!). The slow time events during some skills, especially when hitting critical hits were quite satisfying. Hoard your Jazis shards by keeping your champions alive and keep an eye on how many turns you have left or enemies you must kill in the upper right.
Artifice: War Tactics is available on Steam. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III from Publisher United Games Entertainment and Developer Taito
New chapter in a retro classic. Different game modes give both a classic retro game experience or provide more modern quality of life features.
A classic platformer brought to current consoles. For anyone who remembers Bubble Bobble from the NES days, this is a new version of the game where Bub and Bob have been turned back into humans. For those who are new to the series, Bub and Bob were dragons who blow bubbles to capture enemies.
The duo is back, on an adventure to save their solar system. There are a total of 8 planets to save, each with their own theme and enemy types. All of the planets end in a boss fight that provides a bit of a challenge. If you can learn the pattern, you can make it out of the boss fights without losing a life. As expected the later levels and bosses become harder and more challenging the further you make it.
The Parasol is used for both offense and defense. It can attack enemies, shield you from attacks, allow you to float around the levels, and collect water drops for charged attacks. After attacking an enemy you can turn them into projectiles to attack other enemies or to collect items for points. The game kept the retro classic controls from when you only had 2 buttons; one for attack, one for jump, and the D-pad or thumbstick for movement. Mixing that with the colorful pixel art style and the repetitive soundtrack really hits the nostalgia sweet spot and makes it an easy game for anyone to pick up and play for any gamer, young or older.
There are 2 different game modes to play; Arcade and Standard Mode. Arcade mode is the way the game was intended to be played as this is the only mode you can unlock achievements in. Standard mode gives you a lot of other options including cheats codes for unlimited lives, invincibility, multi-jump, and a few others. This makes the game a lot easier and more accessible. There are also some quality of life additions to the game like saving and rewinding the gameplay.
Sadly, the game is a little short as it can be completed in a little over an hour depending on skill and has little to no story but that was pretty standard for most retro games.
There is a high score challenge for 1 or 2 players. There are also leaderboards for the challenges letting you sort between friends and global leaderboard. Depending on how much you care about the leaderboard this is where the game’s replayability comes in.
Just like the original games, there is local co-op for the modes and the 2 player high score challenge.
Overall, I really enjoyed the game and was definitely hit in the nostalgic feels. The cheat codes and quality of life improvements they added for Standard mode are always great to see in updated retro games.
Parasol Stars: The Story of Bubble Bobble III is available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Playstation. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Hypercharge Unboxed from Publisher and Developer Digital Cybercherries
Feel like a kid again playing with action figures and fighting epic battles in this 1st/3rd person shooter/tower defense game reminiscent of “Small Soldiers”.
Hypercharge Unboxed is a first/third person shooter mixed with a bit of tower defense. You play as an action figure defending Hypercores from waves of enemy toys (think of the movie Small Soldiers or Toy Story with toys coming to life). You join forces with Sgt. Max Ammo to defeat Major Evil and save the Hypercore. This is the tower defense part and you are able to build objects (buildables) to defend the Hypercore; from traps to gun towers, all are part of your defenses. The in-game currency is used to purchase the buildables and there are set spots where you can build them during the between waves countdown timer. The currency is found around the levels and the enemies drop them when they are killed.
The story is set in 14 campaign levels that all feel a little different not just due to a location change but with the scale of the levels and the obstacles in them. As you might have guessed, playing from the perspective of an action figure, everything is massive compared to you. The game starts out in a bedroom, goes to a toy store, a backyard, and to an apartment. The levels grow in size as you progress and have more buildables available to add to your defenses as well as new enemies and enemy types. Not all of the levels are large. There are 3 that are pretty small; namely, an Air Hockey table, a backyard shed, and a battle arena for a boss battle. While these are a little on the smaller side they do offer their own challenges and enjoyment. To hit the nostalgia feels the story is told through a comic book style intro to the levels that really captures that sense of childhood memories many of us have.
One of the things we love about the game is the customization without monetization. All of the customizations are unlocked by completing in-game challenges. Each of the levels has a few challenges that you can complete. Some of the challenges are collecting all of the coins, making jumps from one location to another, and there are some bonus extra ones like finding hidden collectibles, placing stickers, and even shooting a bobble head or two. These are not mandatory to finish the story but if you want the customizations then you want to go for them. Most of them are pretty hidden and will take time to find but the game does have a free play option once you complete the level so you can go back and try for the challenges later.
The amount of customizations in the game is insane. From the amount of characters you can pick from, and several skins for each of the characters, heads, weapons, and even the boxes for the toys, all are made with care. All of it adds to the enjoyment of the game and really nails the concept of the characters as action figures.
The game has local and online co-op with cross play from Xbox to PC but can be played solo with bots. Like most online games, it is better with friends. There are several online PVP modes to play as well which extends the replayability of the game. You do not have to wait until after you’ve completed the campaign to play the PvP modes as they are not locked away behind story progression.
The only thing we did not like about the game was the story progression was locked behind getting a certain number of awards from the previous levels. Once you complete a level you are given an award based on how well you did and how many challenges you completed. We ended up replaying a few levels in free mode to complete the challenges before replaying the levels in story mode to get award credit for the completed challenges. There were a few levels where playing with the bots just wasn’t good enough but since you can play online we were able to play with others online and get the higher awards needed to unlock further progression.
Overall we really enjoyed the game. It had a good story and it made us feel like a kid again playing with action figures. We also spent more time than we would like to admit looking for the hidden spots to place stickers and for the hidden collectibles.
Hypercharge: Unboxed is available on Xbox, Nintendo Switch and Steam. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
Super Space Club from Publisher and Developer GrahamOfLegend
Similar to the arcade classic “Asteroids” but with some nice updates and improvements. Great for a pick up and play “endless mode” type gameplay experience whether you have a little bit of time or a lot.
Super Space Club is an endless lo-fi arcade shooter. Think of a colorful version of Asteroids with a lo-fi sound track. Sounds pretty interesting and confusing at the same time.
You start out with one character, one weapon, and one ship. You are able to purchase other characters, weapons, and ships with Stardust (the in-game currency). The characters are your pilot and each has their own special ability. These come in handy for tight situations or quick getaways. Just like the characters, the weapons and ships each have their own pros and cons that take a little time to get used to. Regardless of the combo chosen, the controls are going to be the same.
After the short tutorial, you are provided with a list of objectives/challenges. They start out pretty easy (kill a few enemies, complete a certain amount of waves, etc) and get harder the more of them you complete. There are even some objectives that require specific characters, weapons, or ships.
These objectives will give you a reason to try out the other weapons and characters, but you are very likely to pick a go-to weapon, character, and ship combo and go back to them after completing the objective. I know I did that while grinding for stardust so that I could purchase the rest of the weapons, characters, and ships. The objectives and challenges are a big part of the game’s replayability and help lessen the repetitive grind.
You get Stardust by killing the enemies and collecting it before it disappears which can be a bit of a challenge depending on how many enemies there are and how well you can control your ship. Since there are no difficulty or accessibility options, the amount of grinding needed to earn stardust is heavily skill based. Since earning stardust is required for some of the objectives/challenges and for purchasing additional characters, weapons, and ships, there will be a lot of grinding for stardust to get them all.
After each run you return to the menu and start over. Select your character, weapon, and ship and start at wave 1. Each run is a repeat of the last run. The waves will always have the same number of enemies and the same enemy types as the same wave in your previous runs. The only things that change are colors. This can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on the objectives you are trying to complete. It does get a little boring replaying the same waves and killing the same enemies over and over again. I would love to see a random mode added to the game where the enemies are randomized for each wave.
It took a little while for us to get used to the game’s controls. Your thumb sticks only control which direction your ship faces and they can cause you to spin around quite quickly. If you want to move forward in the direction you’re facing instead of spinning in place, you need to use the boost. The game also has actual “space” physics so whichever direction you shoot, your ship moves a bit in the opposite direction. We found that if we stopped playing for a while it could take a few games to get the hang of things again.
Sadly, there is no story in the game and only a few songs which you end up hearing over and over again. Don’t get me wrong the songs are great and fit the game perfectly I just wish there were more of them.
The art style is simple and colorful. It nails the retro vibe while still feeling new and adding some new additions to a classic formula. Each time you start a new game you have a different color for your ship, the enemies, and the background. We did find a few times where it was harder to play from a visual perspective as the enemies looked very close to the background color making it hard to see where you needed to aim.
One of the interesting additions is that the energy you use to shoot is also what is powering your shields. This keeps you from shooting the whole time, your power does regenerate at a decent pace but there will be times where you have to make a choice to shoot the enemy and hope you kill it or escape with what little shields you have left. You do have a boost that does not deplete the energy so make sure you use that while trying to escape and wait for your shields to recharge. Another great addition is that when your energy gets critical the audio starts to get a little distorted and a little hard to hear like the ship doesn’t have enough power to keep the music playing. You can also hear the music get a little distorted every time you get hit. This is a great example of the little touches added to the formula to make this its own game and not just an update of an old one.
When your energy has been fully depleted (aka you die) your character initiates warp drive to get away which works with the space theme.
Overall, we enjoyed the game and got sucked into the “just one more game” trap only to realize it’s been almost an hour since we planned on stopping. We would love to see more songs added to the game in a DLC or Title update.
Super Space Club is available on Xbox and Steam. A digital copy of this game was provided to SimpleGameReviews for the purposes of reviewing the game.
