Welcome to our review of Black Future ’88, a modern take on the action adventure platformer.
Reach the top of an evolving tower before your heart explodes. Black Future ’88 is a Synth-Punk roguelike 2D action Shooter. Vertically climb an always evolving procedural tower to reach the top and kill its insane owner…before your heart explodes. Shoot, slash, dash and upgrade yourself to survive the endless waves of deadly traps, homicidal AI and colossal Wardens standing in your way in a stylish alternative version of 1988.
The world is reeling from a nuclear cataclysm, created by Duncan, the tower architect. The First of his bombs fell in the summer of 1988, and by December they had blacked-out the sun with endless rain. We decided to stop keeping time after this, and it’s been 1988 ever since. Everything that lived through the initial attack will die in the extreme floods that followed. These are the times after, where there are no more months, or even weeks…everything is measured in minutes left to live.
Take on the mantle of one of the last remaining misfit survivors, and fight your way to the top of the tower to kill the architect and stop the endless nuclear rain. Ascend to die, and die to survive.
Black Future ’88 is one of those games that starts off slow and gets chaotic really fast. Like it is supposed to be, you get to the game through the very short tutorial. Learn to shoot, learn to dash and jump and so on and then you go straight into the action.
The first few rooms are always way easy. You get your kills in, you jump towards the skull as it leads you to the next room. Sounds easy and it is. Next room, you got a few extra enemies to handle. Nothing overly hard. You just need to make sure you do not lose concentration and bam, you still move on without taking any serious hits.
Then the “fun” starts…
All of a sudden, you get enemies coming from everywhere in the level and if you are unlucky, parts are out of your line of sight too. These are the worst if they can hit you. I had a few health bar hits simply because so much was going on and I was unable to see it all.
But it does not end there…
Boss fights are even more interesting. Not necessarily harder, but more interesting. There is that one time I had to fight off two enemies at once with just 1 health remaining, There was the other time where I succeeded. But also numerous times I failed to do so.
Black Future ’88 is a game really with two faces. On one side you got a really smart game with some fun mechanics and tons of weapons but on the other side you got pure chaos. It makes it hard to both love or hate it.
In conclusion, Black Future ’88 is a game that gave me both fun and frustrations. I would rate it very high if not for the chaotic parts but sadly they are present after all…
