POLYCRUSHER is a fun indie shooter that is meant for playing with your friends in local co-op mode.
Steam: Released
Developer: Atomic Pond Studios
Publisher: Broken Rules
Genre: Multi-player twin stick shooter
Release Date: 14th of October, 2016
Type: Multi-player and Co-op both online and local
What is happening in the game:
You are trapped in a small map with your friends. Your objective is to join forces with them and destroy all the enemies that come your way. Those enemies come in waves that are getting stronger and stronger. After every few waves, you also have to fight the boss.
Pros:
- Colourful Graphics | Just like the screenshots on the Store page, this game looks wonderful when you play it. The colourful kinda-low-poly art really makes the game exciting and sometimes, it also contributes to a few laughs (that chicken special power is super cute!).
- Fun Local Co-op | If you play with your friends, this game includes a lot of different things that encourage cooperation between players. For example, if players stick together, their health bars are recharged faster. Also, some laser beams, that are included in the maps, can only be activated if two platforms are pressed at the same time.
- Fun Singleplayer | Are you forever alone? That’s not a problem anymore! Although you’ll be missing out on some really fun features, this game is still very enjoyable if you’re playing it by yourself, no matter if you’re just waiting for your friends to arrive or if you didn’t even invite any.
- Map Variety | There are seven different maps, each with their own theme (Halloween and Nuclear War, for example) and features. This way, if you get bored of avoiding the same rocks and cliffs all the time, you can switch the map and experience a whole bunch of new things.
- Soundtrack | Although the soundtrack does get repeated a lot of times in this game, I find it really awesome to listen to. Right after you start the game, you get greeted by an energetic tune that really gets you moving. That really contributes a lot to the gameplay as well. If you’ll love it as much as I did, the soundtrack DLC is available on Steam as well.
- Achievements | While playing this game, you can get 30 different achievements. Some of them are really easy to get, while some others demand quite a lot of dedication.
- YOLO Mode | If you’re really looking for a challenge, you can try out the YOLO mode. Tons of enemies are spawned at the same time and you’ll have a hard time killing them all! Although I didn’t perform well in this mode personally, I still find it very entertaining and I believe that other players do, too.
Cons:
- Smartphone App | I was really really excited when I saw that you can also play this game with an app on your smartphone. I installed it right away and ended up disappointed as I could get the app working at all. I tried playing with my firewall settings, I restarted everything a few times, but no luck. There is another problem with this, however: one achievement demands you to try out the smartphone app, meaning that people who experience problems may not be able to get all achievements. I tried asking the developer about this issue on Steam forums, but I did not get a response. I will do my best to update this if the dev does respond, but that does not seem likely.
- No Unlockables? | Even if you play for tens of hours, you won’t really get to see many new things. Don’t get me wrong, however, as this game is still very fun without new things, but it wouldn’t hurt to get at least some unlockables. This way, the player would have a stronger feeling of accomplishing something.
- Broken Achievements | I discovered that (at least) two achievements are broken. I already described the first one in the paragraph about the smartphone app. The second one is supposed to unlock when you watch the credits, but that never happened for me. I hope that this will be fixed in the future.
- Weird Start Menu Controls | This is a minor issue, but still: when I first started the game, I had a few problems with selecting different items on the main menu. Arrow keys don’t work (you have to use W and S to move up and down) and you have to use the backspace key to go back (again, the Escape key doesn’t work). I got used to it soon enough, but it was still causing some trouble at first.
The final verdict:
Overall, this game is extremely fun and I recommend it to everyone who enjoys playing fun casual games that don’t demand a lot of thinking and dedication. If you’re playing with your friends, you’ll be enjoying the most, because you will be able to cooperate in ways that will make killing enemies more efficient. However, playing alone is also fun. There are different maps and characters, which increase variety and decrease boredom.
For 9€, I think that this game is absolutely worth its money. Despite having a few problems regarding achievements and the smartphone app, those things don’t ruin the gameplay at all.
Rating:
(click on the image to see the rating explanation)
With love,
BirdCute
