Astralia

Indie games tend to split themselves into one of two categories, the hits and the misses. The trick to making a hit is usually down to one of the oldest design rules, keep it simple. Games like Angry Birds and Fruit Ninja take an exceptionally simple concept and turn it into something spectacular. Despite all it’s charm Astralia falls into the category of a miss, there’s no overarching problem that makes it a bad game, simply a set of smaller issues that add up to a nagging feeling that something isn’t right.

Astralia is set in a futuristic world where space exploration is fuelled by the gold rush style search for a substance called materia. You play the role of a rookie space pilot being trained by a smart-AI when things begin to go awry, you and your space station are attacked by monsters, beginning your quest to search for answers.

Sadly the story telling is somewhat awkward, the premise of the game is presented with a block wall of text that is a little off putting, past this your on-board AI narrates the rest via small snippets in between missions. The writing is a little dry and lacks a personality, making it hard to be interested in what’s actually happening.

The game play itself offers a reprieve, it’s a fun and fast paced space shooter that manages to keep you on your toes. It is, however, hindered by some of it’s own design choices. The game doesn’t use the customary twin-stick controls, instead vehemently opting to use the left thumbstick for movement and the A button to fire. A weird decision for a space shooter as all shooting is an automatic function based on proximity, instead it feels like your just moving your ship into the right place so it can do it’s own thing as opposed to actually controlling it.

Instead of selling itself as a twin-stick shooter, the game defines itself as a strategy shooter. Including a resource management system and some basic squad controls that come in the form of 8 drone ships. Though the drones are a nice touch, adding some interesting mechanics to the game, the resource management system is endlessly frustrating. Almost every action in the game costs you materia, something which is collected from asteroids or fallen enemies. The problem with this system is that it costs you more in materia to kill a foe than you get back if you decide to use anything besides the heavily underpowered base weapon. This results in frustrating situations where you have no resources and no way to handle the endless onslaught of enemies.

The worst offender though is the level design. The game offers 10 campaign missions, all of which boil down to either an escort mission or simply making you eradicate enemy hives. The tedium sets in after mission 4, leaving the rest of the game as somewhat of a disappointment

Sounds and Visuals

The visuals are one area where Astralia picks up, despite repetitive backdrops the game does have a coherent style that flows well. It may not be ground breaking but the simplistic approach to animations and ship design do the game a service. Sadly though the soundtrack doesn’t, the looping electro track in the background quickly dissolves into white noise that becomes more of an annoyance than something atmospheric. It’s easy to see what the designers had in mind but the execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Conclusion

Whilst Astralia has a quaint charm, it ultimately collapses under the weight of it’s aspiration. In trying to do too much it damages the overall experience. It’s not that there’s no fun to be had in the game, rather that any enjoyment is quickly offset by frustrating design. For those of you who enjoy a challenge it could well be worth a go, for the rest though Astralia doesn’t offer enough to keep you interested for very long.