Recent reviews by Atwa

ROLLBACK!!

Pure catharsis. Buy it, puppy.

Incrodiblé!!

Turn off instinct and put opportunites to minimal and you will have a great time.

Despite its simple look Galak-Z is a quite complex game with surprising amounts of depth. It has a lot of things going on, that makes it feel very hectic and exhilirating. And encourages replayability by being very challenging in a way that always manages to feel fair. It wants you to get better and really make use of all its systems to really destroy the enemy. The AI, as the game so promptly promotes, is very good. Enemies don't just run at you like drones. They will retreat when low, lose track of you if you manage to get out of their sight and try to find close allies to help them make your life just a little harder. You also face multiple factions in most levels, and they will actually not only fight you but each other as well. Making strategic use of the enemy of your enemy a very valid proposition.

Other than that, the game has robust physics that coupled with your very nifty grapple arm allows you to throw rocks, explosives or other space junk into enemies. Or alternatively the enemies themselves into spikes and other hazards that litter the environment. Using what is around you to fight is a huge part of the game that allows each fight to feel very different from the previous one, depending on where you are.

The depth is furthered by you always having two forms available, mech or ship. At the click of a button you can morph in to the other. Both forms have different strengths and ways to play. The mech is all about sword and grappling. It forces you to really use your environments and getting close to your adversaries. While the ship has a laser and missiles to bombard your enemy from afar. What really makes it work is how the different enemy types really make you use them both. You have big enemies that will sweep you aside if you get too close, and smaller faster ships that try to evade you and keep their distance.

The variation of the enemies and just how strong their AI is, together with the depth of the gameplay, is what truly makes Galak-Z special. The structure is that of a "rogue-lite". You go through what the game calls seasons, which are just a collection of five levels tied together with some story beats. These have set objectives usually but randomly generated layout, which makes the replayability high. If you clear all five them without dying you move to the next season. If you die, its back to the start of the season. (Unless you play on the new lower difficulty in which case you get checkpoints between each of the five levels). 

There are also upgrades for your ship. Different lasers, missiles and attributes for each. Like lasers that bounce off walls, has a large spread or set your enemy on fire. These you can find and equip straight away. Or you can find blueprints that then unlock for you to buy between missions, or when you die or move onto a new season. So there is some persistence in between deaths that don't make unsuccessful runs feel completely pointless.

My only real gripe is that I don't love some of the 2D art. Specifically the character designs aren't super great. The gameplay visuals are good though, with nice explosions that really make themselves felt. I also feel that the controls take a while getting used to. I played with a controller and it uses almost every button on it. Which is positive, and really speaks for the depth it has but I did die a few times from input errors. When I got used to it, it feels very natural.

A mind bending sci fi story with an amazing atmosphere that feels way more grandiose than indie games tend to do.

As close to perfection as it is likely to get.

Polish gun would be ready by now!