By admin 
HYPERWIRED brings together the worlds of arcade shooters with some roguelike mechanics of repeatable runs and upgrades – but with a finite resources twist.
This is why I love indie developers because they’re always coming up with some incredibly inventive spins on classic game mechanics. It’s a twin-stick arcade-style shooter where you control a little ship flying around small arenas. The problem is – you have limited energy, health and ammo so you need to keep plugging into various different satellites spread around to not get stranded and annihilated. While doing so, enemies will be flying around with different weapons and abilities to try to stop you.
When you get connected to various satellite ports you can gain extra power, and you can find special batteries to plug in and amplify your ship some more – but your cable is very restrictive on your movement. So it’s a careful balancing act on your finite ship resources, with actually getting around and activating everything to escape each level. But you also pick up computer chips floating around, that attach to your cable to give you other limited bonuses too. It’s such a wonderfully clever idea that makes it feel really satisfying to keep blasting through each level.
You can also find other friendly ships that are out of health, power or ammo, which you need to plug into and then drag them to the correct power station and after that they’ll fly around and help you out and stick with you for your run. Rescuing these stranded ships will also allow you to then unlock them to use them in future playthroughs. Each ship has their own special buff too. One starts with full bombs, another will use less energy while moving and so on.
Enemies will keep warping into the level the longer you’re there too, so it will get quite challenging at times to actually get through and activate all the stations to be able to leave the level. Although, sometimes these enemies warping in will bring goodies you’ll want with them too like enemy ships with batteries attached to pinch from them.
The levels are even partially destructible with your bombs too – that was a surprise. A game that is simple on the surface but clearly has some fun layers to unwrap as you go through.
Check out the launch trailer below:
Game Highlights:
- Tactical “Tethered” Combat: Master the balance between immense power and limited mobility.
- Deep Roguelike Loop: Navigate procedurally generated sectors and master a rechargeable slow-mo system.
- Extensive Customization: Pick up BATTERIES and discover +250 combinations of bullet modifiers and 40+ upgrades to customize your build.
- Fleet Variety: Choose from 10+ distinct ships and rescue stranded pilots to build a supporting army.
- Massive Boss Battles: Engage in intense combat against several massive bosses guarding the end of each galaxy.
- Retro Aesthetics: Built in GameMaker, blending innovative mechanics with striking pixel art.
With a very satisfying gameplay loop and amazingly polished gameplay – this is a must have for fans of twin-stick arcade-style shooters. Thanks to the roguelike mechanics of upgrades between levels and the random generation, this is one you can happily keep coming back to for a long time. Very easy to get into, but later levels will challenge your aim and your resource management for your ship.
Really good stuff! Thoroughly enjoyable.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.