Indie Game Review
In our recent Twitter post we asked our community to send us their games for review. Corundum Games was the first reply with Chromavaders so they get the spotlight as our first, external indie game review!
A signaller of how fun throwback/retro-style games can be.
I’ll start out with saying the two largest comparables that instantly come to mind: Space Invaders meets Tetris. Now when you try the game for yourself, you may draw similarities to other titles but those two were the first ones to pop into my head.
The Goal.
Chromavaders wants to give you retro vibes, which becomes apparent with the CRT-style monitor the game boots up with. You enter a coin into the game, & you’re off! What’s the goal? Match 3 of any colors for as long as you can to get the highest score. You can pick the blocks up and place them down in any form you’d like! But that’s not it, you have these cute, bouncy aliens raining hellfire down on you. Die to anything & you’ll quickly see grey blocks filling up your screen. The grey blocks can be removed with block matching! There are bonus rounds too!
Controls.
The controls are very nice to the touch, snap-back intuitively & placed in a great way. WASD to move, Space to fire, Z is to hasten the onslaught. This all works out great, so I can lean back into my chair, jam out to the tunes and have my left hand do all the work. I’ll discuss in a bit what I would love to see added to the game.
Watch my personal gameplay below!
Thoughts.
I’ll admit, the game at times, had me slam my hand down on the desk, or have a big, sad face as if I wasn’t allowed to have a cookie. Not because there was anything wrong with it, but because I died! If a game makes you rage, you know it’s good! When you boot it up for the first time, you get the impression that those adorable aliens are easy to beat. Don’t let that fool you, those little monsters have an agenda, & that agenda is killing you. It’s hard to juggle the various aspects of gameplay. But that’s what makes it so fun, trying to match 3, shoot the aliens & dodge their attacks all at the same time. & that’s the reason why I will be coming back to this for some challenging, casual gameplay.
The game is still in-development, meaning some functionality is limited. The game is VERY playable in its current state & does not feel like a demo. That being said, I think with the addition of a few things, we could see Chromavaders blossom into something beautiful. For starters, a non-local highscore, that way I can see what the best scores are & have something to aspire to beat. Another addition I would love to see is different background maps, space-style would be fitting. The last but largest scope addition would be online multiplayer, I used to religiously play Tetris Friends, & I loved being able to load up the site, play against anyone in the world & have my own buildable profile. The scope of this is rather large but if implemented, I truly believe Chromavaders could become a new PvP web game with a large player base. There is a market for it! If you’re a player looking for a new tetris-style game to play, please try out Chromavaders, give them a follow on their Twitter as well. If you’re a publisher looking for a near-fully built game to acquire, please reach out to Corundum Games, this game has the opportunity to fill a niche left behind from the now dead Tetris Friends.
