Shootvaders: The Beginning is, as the title suggests, a variation on the one-screen shoot ’em up style most obviously associated with games like Space Invaders and it comes to us by way of Thailand’s own 7 Raven Studios.
Released in 2023, this one was a bit of a surprise when it showed up some two years later in our inbox but we’re always happy to play a shoot ’em up, so let’s see how this one fared.
With no plot to speak of, the main thing here is the gameplay. You know how these things work though. You’re a little space ship at the bottom of the screen and waves of enemies pile in at the top and can either kill you with bullets or collisions. Although, as with Space Invaders, they don’t target you directly. Enemies just shoot and swoop, if you’re in the way, well, that’s on you.
With it’s detailed, colourful backdrops, swarms of enemies and lots of firepower going both ways, this is certainly more dynamic than Space Invaders (classic or not, Space Invaders was a very dull game) and, fundamentally, Shootvaders plays nicely. The controls are tight enough for sure and it all feels quite polished for a game that’ll set you back less than six quid.
And while we like the game, there are a few really odd decisions that had us scratching our heads in baffled confusion. The first is related to the upgrade system. Your ship has four places where you can put weapons and you buy these with either coins (for ‘Earth’ weapons) or materials (for ‘Alien’ weapons). What type (Earth/Alien) you get doesn’t really matter. There are a dozen or so of each, all going up in price. And each weapon can only be placed in a specific slot around your ship and are available permanently.
During play various icons will be dropped by vanquished enemies. These can be shields, bombs, firing rate power ups, weapon currency and so on. But they’ll also drop icons that give you a random weapon. Fine, right? Well, no. Because when these weapons run out (they only last a short time), they’ll leave you with the default weapon or an empty weapon slot depending on which weapon it was. That means that once you’ve got a decent load out, you’ll need to avoid all weapon power ups because ultimately they’ll leave you almost helpless. That’s right. A shoot ’em up where, for the most part, you need to fully avoid picking up weapon power-ups. It’s literally the dumbest thing we’ve ever seen in a shoot ’em up.
Another boneheaded decision is the inclusion of the distance tracker. During gameplay your distance is calculated (you can see the AU tracker on the screenshots in this review) as you go along. This has literally no utility in the game. It means nothing. The only thing it affects is the trophies. The last trophy you’ll get is to travel 500,000AU in one game (it’s not cumulative). The thing is, once you’ve beaten all 32 levels, you’ll only be 80,000AU in.
But here’s the, very dumb, thing. You can leave one enemy alive on wave 1 and just ride the distance tracker. It took over four hours of doing that to get the trophy (I did the old rubber band trick and went and cooked Sunday dinner). What the fuck is that all about?!
There are other things too. Such as the way that every four levels there will be a pointless corridor section where it’s very difficult to die and is just a waste of everyone’s time. And yet there are no boss battles. In a shoot ’em up. I mean it feels like replacing some of those dull corridor bits with boss battles would be a good idea right? Or at least have one at the end of wave 32. But no.
And there’s also the way that you earn weapons. It takes forever to get enough money together to afford good weapons and it’s not very clear at all how the placement system works so you can easily waste a huge chunk of money buying a weapon for a slot that you’ve already got a good weapon in. And, of course, you can’t preview weapons before you buy them. So look forward to wasting a couple of hours worth of saved money on a weapon you don’t need.
It’s a shame really because the core shooting gameplay is alright here. The game is certainly a lot more exciting that Space Invaders was. Even more so than good games like Galaga ’88. But it’s just saddled with a few bad mechanics. And visually the game does okay with some nice, slowly rotating planets showing up as backgrounds. Sometimes they can affect bullet clarity though, so watch out for that.
Overall, we like Shootvaders but we wish it had been playtested by people who understand what fun is. Grinding for ages to get weapons isn’t fun. That’s why most rogue-likes give you the upgrades pretty consistently. And this game could certainly use a bit of variation. But for the price, it’s not bad.
Summary
Shootvaders does a good job of making the static screen, Space Invaders format more dynamic and it’s a pretty good game. But it’s also beset by some terrible design decisions when it comes to gameplay.
