Nova Swarm

You did all the advertising and outreach correctly but you forgot to make the game fun to play. This is a masterclass in what not to do as an indie game developer, more curator reviews than regular user reviews and hardly any sales. This game showed up on the front section of a special steam shoot em up sale, you had every opportunity to have an explosive game but you forgot to make the game actually fun.

[h1] ⚖️ MATCHING EXPECTATION:[/h1] * 🟢 = Available = Fun +1 * 🔴 = Not Available = Fun -1 * Match Nothing = 0 Fun 🟢 Consistent Arcade Stages 🟢 Optional Auto Fire / Aim 🟢 Optional Mouse Control Movement 🟢 Score Attack for replay value 🟢 Stay with Primary Weapon from start til end 🔴 Variety Weapons 🔴 Diversity Enemies 🔴 Interesting Level Design 🔴 Loadout Management 🔴 More Grindy More Powerful [table] [tr] [th]fMeter[/th] [th]FUN[/th] [th]fUN METER[/th] [th]DISCOUNT[/th] [th]COMMUNITY[/th] [th]REVIEWER[/th] [/tr] [tr] [th]A+[/th] [td]5[/td] [td]Loving it [/td] [td]No Wait[/td] [td] -[/td] [td] -[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]A[/th] [td]4[/td] [td]Liked it[/td] [td]No Wait[/td] [td] -[/td] [td] -[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]B[/th] [td]2-3[/td] [td]Half satisfied[/td] [td]Wait 50%[/td] [td] -[/td] [td] -[/td] [/tr] [tr] [th]C[/th] [td] 1[/td] [td]Less interested[/td] [td]Wait 75%[/td] [td] -[/td] [td] ✔[/td] [/tr] …

Decent little retro vertical shooter. It's not one that will be your next big game, but it has enough nostalgic fun that I feel like it is worth the $5 they are charging. Controller works well for gameplay, but menus are a bit clunky unless using mouse. I'll definitely play it some more between my other games.

I've only played for about 15 minutes so far, but my first impressions are very positive. The quality is definitely there, and the overall scope of the game is already pretty clear. One thing I noticed is that the screenshots don't seem to fully match what’s actually in the game for some reason. The soundtrack is awesome as well. Definitely give this a try if you enjoy similar games. 🙂

First of all, I want to emphasize that I don’t care about or even mind the use of AI in games. I could lie and say that the game is good, or simply say that it is bad, but I care about the game and want the developer to improve and succeed. The good thing is that I like shoot ’em up games as well as Vampire Survivors, and combining the two genres is a great concept that can be very fun. However, this game needs more polish, testing, and improvements to become truly fun and addictive. I will list all the issues so the developer can use them as notes or tasks for future updates: 1. The overall spaceship graphics look uninspiring. 2. I expected the game to be full of neon effects and explosions, but the current effects are very dull and weak. Players need to feel satisfied when destroying enemy spaceships. 3. The radar element is used repeatedly for both the player and enemies, which makes it feel repetitive. 4. Some projectiles, such as homing missiles, do not respect their direction or angle. They look wrong when approaching the player while rotating. 5. The bosses are weak, and the game is extremely easy. I reached the third level, and the player can quickly become overpowered. 6…

An upgrade to Galaxians, with survivor-like powerups. The game is competently done and runs pretty well and can be somewhat addictive. It wants you to graze enemy bullets, but this mechanism doesn't work very well due to the way the bullets move, and the fact they rarely reach your vicinity. There is sensory overload on every screen, it's difficult to know where to look at, and when you finally decide to read something it's some non-sensical text, the powerups say things like "rail surge, the line signed a waiver" or "line matrix, five tiny bad ideas" or "swarm contract, read nothing profit briefly". It seems machine-translated from chinese, but I suspect the dev tried to be funny too. At the end of the day, the game is repetitive and too easy. Each wave is cleared in 10 seconds and the bosses in 15. Except when they decide they can hitscan you and take several lives at once. [h1](follow my curator page [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/33882793/]GenXPlayers[/url] for more retro and indie reviews)[/h1]