Welcome to our review of Neon Caves, a game with retro graphics and a weird game mechanic for a shooting game!
Explore the Neon Caves, a fragile ecosystem lost to the world for centuries. Recently rediscovered by your research team, use your ship’s anchor ability and elite implements to stabilise the cave while keeping the hostile inhabitants at bay.
Originally part of the Indie Statik Kickstarter GAME PACK!
Neon Caves is a shooter but far from a normal one. This being said, you will be annoyed so much at first by the way this game handles the maneuvring around the Neon Caves. When you fire your cannon, it propels you in the opposite direction unless you anchor yourself. So almost the entire time, you are flying away from the goal, being to finish the golden bits that threaten the caves.
Most of the time, I was using the anchor to just get a foothold in the cave, so I could succesfully fire off some shots, rather than fly into enemies or hostile projectiles. This game was no fun at all at first. I even tried taking off my joycon, so I could flip the flying axis, but then every single time I anchored, I ended up firing at the wrong direction. No fun at all.
I do love the idea behind this game, a basic survival shooter. But damn, the way it is represented is just so wrong. I do not mean the graphics here, those are quite awesome, all neon and stuff, very old skool Asteroids feeling which I loved and the reason why I grabbed this review code for myself. I tried to stick with it, really did. I even went into the options, check if you could invert the flying axis, maybe it was present, alas I was disappointed.
The options did have a “Vlambeer” mode, which I instantly activated. To my big dismay, this was not the hoped for mode, instead it was this nausea inducing incessant shaking of the screen, which made me quit and uninstall the game even. This game does a great job at making gamers dislike it.
In conclusion, a very short review because quite frankly this game is no fun at all, it has weird design choices, that vlambeer function made me sick and my entire experience with this game was just one big disappointment. I am giving it 0,5 out of pity and because I liked the idea, but that is where it ends.
