There's nothing wrong with making a game that tries to recapture the simplicity of late 70s and early 80s arcade games, which seems to be the goal of Bare Knuckle Development's Super Mega Space Blaster Special Turbo.
Its inspirations are clear as day, with five game modes that all marry elements of Asteroids, Defender, and even a little bit of Missile Command and Robotron. It does manage to capture an element of the simple, twitchy Gameplay that defined that bygone era, and there's certainly fun to be found in its retread of familiar ideas. But there's very little that the game does to stand out, and enough little annoyances that keep the game from being much more than an basic time-waster.
You've Gotta Have A Story, Right?
Shooting at things in space is such a time-honored tradition that it almost seems unnecessary to put in any effort to justify why you're filling the sky with bullets and the charred remains of whatever otherworldly beings just happen to be in your way. However, Bare Knuckle Development decided that SMSBST needs context, so they've spelled out the story through the means of a glorious single-screen text dump.
The gist is that mankind destroyed its own planet and needs a new one. They've found one, but the mean old aliens who already live there decided that we can't have it, so we've got to kill them all. That doesn't exactly paint our actions in the kindest light, but at least now we have context for the game going forward, even though it doesn't exactly need it.
Keep It Simple
The basic gameplay is about what you'd expect from a single screenshot: turn around your ship with thrusters and brakes, shoot down the asteroids and enemies, and stay alive by not getting hit. The game gets harder as it goes on, spawning progressively-more-difficult enemies, and if you get hit, you're dead and have to start all the way over.
The result is a series of fast-paced games that last no more than a few minutes, with the goal being to make it to the top of the game's leaderboards. There's progression to be found by collecting coins through completing challenges in order to unlock new ships and abilities.
There's no overarching narrative, however, nor is there a long-term goal besides getting more points than everyone else out there who owns the game.
There's power-ups, of course, including shields that let you take an extra hit, though it takes a bit of time to get used to identifying which power up does what on sight.
In fact, there's a few issues cased by the game's art, the most glaring of which is how the color of ammunition isn't too different from the color of asteroids, meaning that it can be hard to tell at a glance whether your ship is barreling headfirst into a much-needed amo pickup or a rock that's going to end your match real quick.
The game's not combined into one cohesive whole, and instead is split up into five different modes - two of which can only be played with two players. The other three, which make up the meat of the game, can be played either in single-player or co-op.
Mother May I?
The first mode, "Protect Mother," involves fighting off endless waves of missiles, enemies, and asteroids as you attempt to keep them from hitting the mothership located at the bottom of the screen.
You'd think that would mean that your foes start at the top of the screen and make their way towards the bottom, but weirdly, that's not how it works. The enemies start at the left and right of the screen, and at the beginning most of them just bypass the ship harmlessly, though the player is penalized if any enemy leaves the screen without being killed. The exceptions are the enemies that spawn in at the very bottom of the screen, at which point they're already right next to the mother ship and don't have to move far to strike it and damage it.
I Will Survive
The second, and simplest, mode is Survival, which just sets your ship in the middle of a field of enemies and tasks you with living for as long as possible. The catch is that your ship is on the fritz, can't stop moving or firing, and is slowly running out of fuel.
The challenge at hand is navigating the ship as it continues to careen at high-speed through increasingly-crowded skies, trying to make sure that you get enough ammo and fuel to keep yourself going along the way. It's a very bare-bones mode, though it's hard not to feel that it'd be better-served if it even did away with its gimmick of the broken ship, instead just letting players face an endless onslaught using the game's regular controls.
Floating In A Most Peculiar Way
By far, the strongest game mode in SMSBST is Save The Colony, which tasks the player with grabbing as many colonists as they can while they float helplessly among the stars.
The mode forces the player to pay attention to everything going on onscreen, jetting around to grab the colonists
Most satisfyingly, it has a boss to face at the end if you manage to survive long enough, giving a sense of finality and accomplishment to the mode that can't really be found elsewhere in the game.
A Sum Of Its Parts
Jetting around a single screen and shooting aliens has its charm, and Bare Knuckle Development has managed to create a solid core gameplay that forces quick thinking and skillful maneuvering. But ultimately, that's all they've accomplished. The result is a game that doesn't have all that much to offer, and what's there doesn't feel particularly special.
It's fun, but it never feels like something special. At $5, it's priced right for what it is, but it's hard not to think that the developers could have found a way to make a game that feels more cohesive and consequential - or at very least, found a way to do more than mash different types of classic gameplay together and call it a day.
A Switch review copy of Super Mega Space Blaster Special Turbo was provided to TheGamer by Bare Knuckle Development. Super Mega Space Blaster Special Turbo is currently available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.
Super Mega Space Blaster Special Turbo