Developer: Shane Berezowski
Publisher: Black Shell Media
Platforms: PC
Tested on: PC
CMYW – Review
WTF, OMG, IMO, IIRC, WWJD, all these acronyms have a meaning, and so does CMYW. It’s not Can’t Mean You’re Willing, nor is it Create Mankind You Wussy. It’s simply the first letters of the colours represented. In this case: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and White.
Story
CMYW is all about shooting asteroids and that’s all there is to it. There is no other underlying story or lore, but then again, not every game needs a story to be entertaining. CMYW is one of those. If you are really pressed, you can just invent a reason as to why the space ships need to gather resources.
Graphics
CMYW goes back to the arcade days with the Asteroids game, where your only goal was to shoot space debris and not get hit while doing so. The developers have added a little colour to the monogromatic tone of the original game and it’s a nice touch. When your processing facility is damaged the colour palette gets inversed and it actually looks like the space time continuum gets disrupted. It’s a real nice visual effect that really emphasizes the: ‘Oh shit’ moment, where you know things are going down the crapper and you are helpless to stop it.
Sound
There’s little or nothing to say on the sound score. The menu screen music is really soothing and a rather well known piece of classical music which stands in stark contrast with the other tune that plays when you actually start blasting meteors and asteroids. It’s a trippy beat which doesn’t really indicate just how close you are to danger or how close the danger is to you, but it’s a cool tune nonetheless.
Gameplay
CMYW is a top down space shooter. It’s developed by Shane Berezowski. CMYW is supposed to be played on a controller, which is evident as without it you’ll have a very difficult time playing either of the two modes of the game.
The first being co-operative. Here you and up to 3 friends will shoot anything that moves and isn’t a friendly ship, while gathering resources and making sure no asteroid endangers your resource managing facility. It sounds easy, but it is very tricky to manage. As you rack up points, which goes faster if you play with a more friends, making things go from easy to frantic in the blink of an eye. You’ll have to coordinate very precisely on who does what because later into the game, you’ll need to stay focused with all the random debris flying around trying to take you, your friends and your base down. Don’t feel like playing with your friends? How about you play against them? Just strap a meteorite to your ship and smash into your friends.
Fret not, as you shoot the space rocks, you’ll sometimes collect power ups to make life of an asteroid far less pleasant. With gun upgrades your rock shooting powers will increase, but with more power comes more kickback, so firing willy nilly might seem like a smart thing to do, but you’ll soon find yourself far out of orbit of where you want or need to be.
If you are downed, don’t worry, you aren’t out of the game just yet. You’ll be defenseless and if you hit another asteroid in this state the game will reply with: ‘Need it be said: You’re dead.’. However, if you do make it to your resource managing base, your ship will be restored and you can go out and make some more space dust. The higher your score, the higher the danger level will be, and as this rises, more and more random stuff will try and take you down.
The co operative mode can be played single player, although it’s not recommended. The difficulty spice early on will take you down before you can even reach danger level five. If you are really out for a challenge then you can play it and use your keyboard. The controls are the W,A,S,D. With W,A,D being the directions you can steer your vessel in, and S being used for you to drop your resources in mid flight to pick up more valuable ones should your inventory be stuffed to the brim. It needs to be said that the space ships handle like butter on a hot skillet, they slide all over the place and precise movement isn’t all what it’s cracked up to be with these.
Rankings lets you boast your score online, and even though the offline co-operative gameplay and competitive gameplay is fun, having an option to go online and lay into random strangers spaceships with a giant space rock seems like a gleeful dream come true. Alas it was not meant to be.
Conclusion
CMYW is a game which takes you back to the days where games had easy controls and simple objectives but were as tough as nails. The same can be said about CMYW, as at first you’ll be breezing through the danger levels, only to find yourself and your friends being walled by the amount of space debris that has a mind of it’s own with only one mindset: kill you and take out your base.
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