Developer: Image and Form
Steam Deck Compatibility?: Playable
Rrp: £19.99 (Gog and Steam)
A game by Image and Form that isn’t a Steamworld game? Well, colour me both surprised and interested. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the developers would want to create something outside of Steamworld but… I suppose it would be like if an author known for only writing horror suddenly wrote a romance novel. You knew that they always could have done that, but they’re the horror person not the romance person. Perhaps that’s a flawed analogy but I’m sticking with it.
This game is a 3D action platformer where you play as Rani. She’s one half of a two person (and one robot) space hauling/salvaging/scrapping crew. From what the opening dialogue suggests business has not been going well, but the pair follow a strange energy reading to a seemingly dead planet and decide to check it out only to find a strange ‘gunk’ is everywhere.
The core loop of the game breaks down like this; You explore an area, find gunk and remove it (by sucking it up), harvest the resources in the now revitalised area, upgrade your gear, rinse and repeat.
As you can see it’s a pretty simple loop, but it works wonderfully for this game as it’s quite short and to the point.
Once an area is cleared of the gunk it becomes revitalised, with plants appearing and resources becoming available to collect. When it comes to the upgrades, you don’t need every upgrade in order to progress, but getting them is very easy and the game will inform you which ones are vital.
As I mentioned this game is pretty short, lasting about eight hours to playthrough. On the whole it’s a pretty light hearted affair but does go a bit harder than I expected at times, especially in the latter half. This is definitely a fun little experience, though I will admit I’m glad I got it in a sale rather than paying the full Rrp.
