SteroidS

I’m here to talk to you about SteroidS, and whether or not it is something that you should try. Sorry, sorry, that’s the best I could come up with. Anyways…

SteroidS is a top-down shooter for the PC brought to you by the creative minds over at The Domaginarium. The story starts you off on a need to know basis, and I guess you don’t really need to know very much. You are a scientist…a scientist with a gun…a gun that shoots steroid bullets. For some reason, you are trapped in a room with wave after wave of “thugs” either coming for you, or for the exit. Either way, you have to stop them from reaching their goal.

The only tool you have is your steroid gun; problem is, your gun will actually speed up stronger thugs. The stronger the thug, the more shots it can take; the more shots they take, the faster they run. Needless to say, this causes intense situations for your character.

There are six different levels and six different gameplay modes:

Ze Great Escape: prevent enemies from escaping through the south doors. If 15 enemies escape it’s game over. Power ups are activated

The Heat Of The Swarm: waves of enemies come after you so don’t let them get you. You have 3 lifes, but power ups are available.

This Is Loco: prevent enemies from escaping through the south doors. If 5 enemies escape it’s game over, and this time there are no power ups.

Too Sexy For Them Thugs: waves of enemies come after you, you only have one life and no power ups.

The Blue Men Show: you have 300 seconds to shoot as many blue men as possible, but avoid shooting the generic enemies. If you kill 5 generic enemies you lose the match.

Speeding Bullet: you have 300 seconds to shoot everything that moves, but every time an enemy touches you, you lose points points.

All six of these gameplay modes bring a unique twist to the gameplay. I personally preferred the survival modes: Speeding Bullet, Too Sexy For Them Thugs, and The Heart Of The Swarm. I’ve always loved underdog modes like these where you have to try and fend off as many waves of bad guys as you can, a la horde mode. I found these modes to be the most entertaining. Modes like Ze Great Escape and This is Loco tended to just frustrate me, and the better I faired in those modes, the more frustrated I got.

The graphics are definitely stylized and keep to a cartoony feel, which is probably a good thing. It lends a more playful atmosphere to the game and it’s slightly dark humor, and probably keeps the PC police from getting overly hostile. The characters are not that memorable.  Some are pretty funny and whacky, and they’ve infused a lot of easter egg type humor which I found great, but I don’t think that was really Domaginarium’s main focus. I think they were more interested in how well the controls worked, and how fun the game was, and I feel they succeeded in both areas.

The controls are simple enough: WASD for moving the good Doctor, and the mouse for aiming and firing. This is a little different than most top-down shooters I’ve played. I am more used to the character rotating when I aim. In SteroidS, the room rotates around your character. The movement is fluid, and it makes for a lot of fun shooting action, but it does bring up issues. One of the issues is that if you find yourself backed up against a wall, the wall doesn’t disappear to keep your character in sight, and you have no idea what is around your character. Another issue is that when the action really starts getting hectic and you’re rotating as fast as possible, it can get pretty disorienting. These problems do cause a little bit of frustration, but they are far from being deal breakers. The controls are well suited to the game and movement is very fluid. This game is a hell of lot of fun to play.

The Domaginarium is obviously a very creative and talented team, and with SteroidS they’ve shown what can be done with Epic’s Unreal Engine if you just step outside of the proverbial box. They’ve created a very enjoyable top-down shooter, and kept it simple and to the point. You won’t get any type of story with this game, but the replay value is definitely there. The difficulty levels allow for any level of players to have fun, but it does get increasingly difficult over time, which makes for some great hectic gameplay.

SteroidS can be purchased legally at Indievania for $5.99. I highly recommend that you check it out.

You can also check out The Domaginarium website here.