REVIEW | LASERPITIUM (Tidbit-style)

We love all sorts of games. Sometimes it is hard to cover a game in our traditional review style that’s why we have tidbit-style reviews. These shorter reviews cover games that deserve attention too but simply don’t fit our good, mixed, and bad template. In addition, they get a monthly summary article to give them even more reader attention!

LASERPITIUM | Score: 65%
Publisher: Eastasiasoft
Developer: Reeteam

This 2D sidescroller is completely hand-drawn, which makes this Shmup game stand out from all the others. There’s nothing really else original about it but that’s okay… as you might know I love this kind of genre and LASERPITIUM provides everything it needs to be fun and challenging. Unlike many others, it doesn’t visually warn players when enemies pop up from other directions. A weird design choice as many deaths come from that. Feels a bit cheap to be killed like that when you just dodged a million bullets like Neo in The Matrix, you go from feeling bad-ass to frustrated.

You can play as three ships and they play completely different. My favorite was a ship that could auto-aim and shoot enemies, it still remains balanced as the shots fired are weaker but I found it nice to not focus on my aiming so I could take in the nice-looking visuals. I do have to mention that the enemies, especially bosses are very generic though. Same with the music, enjoyable but a bit bland. I don’t want to sound too negative as there are a lot of positives too. Two-player co-op for instance and the hard-to-reach collectibles for extra scores are a nice touch. Lots of difficulty levels so beginners or Shmup experts will find the perfect balance in challenging gameplay.