• Laser Disco Defenders
  

  53 minutes playtime

  1 of 12 achievements

Twinstick shooter, but with procedurally-generated levels (you have to start the whole game over if you die). You can move in any direction without momentum, but letting go of the left-stick has you slowly fall downward. The game’s main gimmick is that ALL projectiles stay in the level, constantly bouncing off walls (they slow down after the first bounce to make things easier to manage), and everyone has friendly-fire. It can make the game trickier at times, but it can also result in enemies getting killed offscreen by shots you’ve forgotten about. The exit only appears once you’ve killed all the enemies in the level.

The first few levels are short and basic, just halls and arenas with turrets and spikes attached to the walls and mines floating in the air.

The second few levels introduce a couple other things: bubble generators (bubbles hurt you and don’t always stand out as well as regular projectiles), 4-way laser cannons that fire laser-beams if you get close enough (lasers won’t stay in the level), and knights that bring out a shield when you shoot them so you have to get behind them and shoot again to kill them. The 4-way laser cannons are a bit devious since they have a not-exactly-obvious force-field that only goes away briefly after they shoot, and the foreshadow for their attack is just a sound effect (no thin line like lasers in other games have); they could’ve been introduced better if not for the procedural generation. There’s also one room where there’s a bunch of 4-way laser cannons combined with the knights, and this room is pretty hectic even without taking into consideration the game’s projectile-reflecting gimmick.

The third and final set of 5 levels introduce background tiles that glow on/off, and will hurt you if you’re in front of them when they’re at max glow. One potential setup has a large arena with turrets on the edges, but each quadrant has its own timer for the glow tiles, with each quadrant being big enough that you won’t have enough time to escape when they start glowing if you’re too close to the corner. That was how I died the first time, and on my second run, I never encountered that room at all.

The game’s final (only) boss has its weak points scattered around the arena, but you wouldn’t know they’re weak points at first; you’d think they’re just bumpers or something because their force field is different than the ones the 4-way laser cannons have, and their force-field’s brief disappearance is on a timer instead of based on anything you can do (yup, it’s a wait-to-attack boss). The boss can also attack with its own laser cannons, which increase in number as more weak points are destroyed, but once again, you’d only know how many or where they’re aiming by looking for the grey cannons that pop up in front of the grey background.

Overall, it’s okay, but it feels more like a proof of concept than a full game, with the permadeath just being a way to pad out its length. Wait for a good sale.