Developer: Studios iLLOGIKA
Publisher: Studios iLLOGIKA
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Subaeria – Preview
Subaeria is a new game by by Studios iLLOGIKA that’s all about manipulations and destruction. Not only is the game a dungeon crawler, but you might have to solve a puzzle or two as well in order to continue to the next room… Enter a world where you have no weapons or abilities at all and use your environment in order to outsmart your enemies.
Subaeria is probably one of the most unique dungeon crawlers you’ll ever see, but before we go into that, let’s take a look at the basics. The game starts off with a simple tutorial that teaches you the fundamentals of the game. When playing with a controller (recommended), you simply move with the left stick and control your drone with the right stick, more about the very cool drone later. It explains how switches work and how you can’t get hit by lasers (duh).
The game features a pretty linear story. Each character has its own story, but the “main” character is Styx, a girl which has been bankrupted. In order to survive, she either has to pay back her dept or be on the run forever. When her dad receives the news, he decides to take her place. You now have to try and get your dad back and set everything straight!
When we look at the next game element, graphics, something seems to be very wrong. The game itself looks pretty good and is nice to look at, but the framerate at which it plays is kinda horrible. It runs around 40-50 FPS most of the time even when everything is on medium. But seeing as this is an early access game, maybe optimization may come later (said every developer ever). However, its counterpart sound seems to be doing very good. The music in Subaeria is great and accompanies the game greatly, and the sound effects aren’t too shabby either.
As said, Subaeria is an all out dungeon crawler, but it has some pretty unique elements to it. You’ll have to scour random room to random room in order to complete your objectives, but you don’t have any attacks to help you do that. There’s only you and your little drone. The drone can be used to install different mods you can find around the levels like confusion or freezing, but it has more of a support than attack role. But how do you progress? Each level has some “cleaners” in them, robots that you have to kill. Robots can consist of three colors: blue, yellow or grey. Bots of other colors can damage each other, but they won’t damage their own.
So how do you actually kill the robots? Easy, you let them kill each other or use your environment. Most levels feature a set of lasers, blue or yellow. The lasers can damage robots of the opposite color by guiding the bots into them. You can also use explosive barrels and let them explode near robots, but the real fun is in letting them kill their own, which can be done with careful positioning.
In addition to just levels where you kill robots in order to continue, you also have some safe hubs. Here, you can talk to people or buy stuff like health packs or other upgrades with money. Money is usually dropped when destroying objects or robots. You can also find upgrades without paying for them, but you have to get to the upgrade first, which may require some careful parkour. You can also find health packs dropped by enemies or hidden in levels, which is a great deal because you don’t have health regeneration.
Furthermore, you have different parts of the city you can travel to. Every Block, Ward, District and so on has a transition point. Here, you can pass between blocks but this comes with a price. Every time you jump blocks, the security level will go up with one, making levels harder and harder the longer you keep playing. It’s actually a pretty original way to deal with level progression, because quests will send you over and back to different districts.
You won’t only have to fight little bots though. Once in a while, you might come across a boss room which can be pretty fun to figure. Some fights may take a long time if you don’t figure out what to do, which makes it all the more hectic because you’re under stress of being killed as well.
The only disturbances are (as said) bad performance and no auto-saving. Once you start a run, you’ll have to finish it until the end. The game will really need an auto save feature in later stages, because the game will hopefully keep getting bigger and bigger, because there’s only about 3-4 hours of gameplay in the current preview build.
Conclusion
Subaeria mixes together some pretty interesting genres and succeeds at it quite well. It’s a fun game that will have you roaming and running through randomly generated rooms with different difficulties and loot. There’s also some very fun bosses and the way you have to kill them and other enemies is really unique as well. The only downsides are the (currently) bad performance and no auto-save feature, which is kind of acceptable in this stage of the game, but there’s a long way to go.
Subaeria - Preview,
No Comments