Ballpoint Universe - Infinite

good game. love that its hand drawn

Every background, enemy, and character looks like it crawled out of a really talented kid's notebook margins, and that alone kept me curious throughout. The shoot em up sections are the real draw, and once you figure out that stacking melee weapons wrecks everything, there's a satisfying loop to upgrading your ship and pushing for gold ranks. That said, the platformer overworld sections feel like they belong to a different, less polished game, and the mouse-only controls make jumping around feel like trying to herd a cat. For four dollars it's hard to complain too loudly, but go in knowing you're here for the visuals and the shooting, not some cohesive experience.

❤️

Hallucinating

1/10 – Ballpoint Universe: Infinite: A Doodle-Shrouded Manifesto of Imperialist and Zionist Propaganda Beneath its hand-drawn aesthetic and seemingly whimsical presentation, Ballpoint Universe: Infinite operates as a sinister vehicle for American liberal imperialism. The game’s core loop—endless expansion through hostile territories under the guise of "exploration"—perfectly mirrors the doctrine of American exceptionalism, where military and economic domination are repackaged as benevolent discovery. Players are conditioned to view foreign landscapes as blank slates for conquest, their inhabitants as obstacles to be erased with colorful gunfire. The game’s procedural generation of enemies reinforces the imperialist mindset that resistance to Western expansion is both inevitable and morally justified, framing the player’s violent progression as an innate right rather than colonial aggression. The game’s enemy designs carry disturbing Orientalist coding, with certain foes resembling exaggerated Middle Eastern stereotypes—turban-like shapes, serpentine patterns, and explosive suicide attackers. These caricatures reduce complex cultures to simplistic threats, echoing the dehumanizing…

Bought for the art style but got bored within a few minutes. I do enjoy a good shmup but this one wasn't for me. Such is the gamble you take with Steam sales.