CRYPTARK
Time and time again I have found myself finding some sort of hidden gem through Steam, and time and time again I find myself finding early access games that are so polished and done so well that it really makes you want to wonder what the final outcome is going to be. Cryptark is that game right now.
There's been multiple videos talking about this game on Youtube and I've watched quite a few of them and at that point, I decided to check the game out for myself. Cryptark is a game where you find yourself piloting a certain style of ship with upgradable weapons, shield, rockets, grenades and a lot more. You go through stages in the game and you plant yourself onto different ships and landmarks to look for artifacts and at the same time, destroy everything in your path to get to the end goal, which is to destroy the "core" of the ship. But sometimes it's not as easy as it sounds. Certain ships that you fly into have a certain difficulty to it which is labeled in levels, and if you're like me and you really love difficult, the more difficult ships are a lot of fun. I won't say i'm the greatest at this game yet, but I'm coming to find out that there is a really big tactical stress on this game and you have to follow a certain set of goals that you can set for yourself if you want the best chance of success. There are alarm systems that connect to the core, there are turrets that can spot you without you knowing, and there are shield generators that need to be destroyed in order for you to even have a chance at destroying the core. The game does an excellent job at making you work for your goal and it will throw everything it has at you to make sure that you fail. I feel like this is a game that if you play it more and more, you'll get better.
Recently there was a rogue mode implimented because before that, the game only had a campaign mode. Don't get me wrong, I do love a campaign mode, but i'm also really happy that the developers have taken the next step and went with a rogue mode as well, which is something I will be putting a lot of my time into. The rogue mode basically works the same way as the campaign mode, but there's a lot less stress on making sure you do the right things all the time. You are destined to fail quite a bit but that just makes the game a lot more fun in the long run. You can pick up weapon upgrades in the ship that you're trying to destroy as opposed to the campaign mode where you pick up your upgrades before you start your mission. I played a little bit of the rogue mode this morning and once again, the developers have made sure that no matter what they put into the game, it's as polished as you can get. It runs flawlessly and I can see myself playing it for hours on end trying to find the right upgrades that fit my build. It's a lot more fast paced than the campaign as well which is nice.
This game has a huge amount of potential and if you've heard of it by now, you know what i'm talking about. This is one of those cases like I said at the beginning of this post where it's one of those early access games that evidently came out of nowhere and has caught people by surprise. The atmosphere of the game is great, since I love space-esque style games. The soundtrack is fantastic and doesn't seem to be rushed. The mechanics are super easy to get into whether you're using a keyboard or a controller, even though I prefer keyboard. The enemies do seem to be a lot of the same skin, but at the same time, I don't really focus on that much since i'm destroying them to get to the main goal anyway, so that's not really too much of a fuss.
In the end, i'm really looking forward to seeing where this game goes and if the developers truly want to make this game as amazing as it already is, they'll stick to the formula that they are using for it right now, because as it stands, you can play this game right now and it will not feel like an early access game, even though it says that it is one. I'll be looking forward to the full release, and i'm sure the full release will be even better than it's current build, and that's exciting. Definitely do give this game a shot if you're into the Binding of Isaac / Nuclear Throne esque style of gaming. It's very heavily influenced by the shooting styles of Nuclear Throne as well, which I didn't mention before. You have that 360 degree turn around thing that both this and Nuclear Throne do as well.
What are you waiting for? Pick this game up. It's cheap right now anyway. You have nothing to lose.