Ever heard of a little game called Space Invaders? A tiny game from when dinosaurs still roamed the earth? No? Or the countless of lookalike games that came after? Well, worry not then my gaming amigos! Because Ratalaika’s got you covered with Josyanf1 ‘s version of this beautiful game. Let’s introduce their little game called Zeroptian Invasion. Because why not, right? It does exactly what it should. It looks ancient, it has a kicking soundtrack and you get to shoot at alien heads that come down and spew down only what I could call mangled weenies (added note: or for our vegetarians out there, carrots) and corrosive spit. Oh and you fly a tiny space ship. *sigh* Okay, let’s get this over with… Grab your space gear and suit up, for Zeroptian Invasion
- Audio: What I appreciated in here, was the fact that the audio part was done superbly. That old school vibe in the music really tickles my funny bone and I get giddy when I hear some sweet old 8bit soundtracks. So kudos, whoever did the audio! You created some awesome tunes to accompany the Zeroptian Invasion!
- Easy 1000G: By far the easiest 1000G ever. I spent 25 minutes getting them all. This doesn’t affect the score, but for you game score mongerers out there? Give this one a for sure shot. You’ll add 1000G in no time to your ever-growing balance!
- Sluggish Controls: By the heavens, this game moves like it’s in a wheelchair… Someone, please give grandpa his walker! Every move to the left or to the right that you make will feel like you are pushing around a mountain and are almost out of energy. Why does your spaceship move so SLOOOW? The rest moves at an extremely fluid pace, why not me? Hm? Can’t I get a bit of extra speed? Dodging your stuff is already hard enough as it is. Don’t hamstring me even more by giving me the world’s slowest spaceship! It’s not because this is based on a game that came out when grandpa was a young’un, that I have to move around slowly as well! Hm!
- Tate? Why?: There’s this weird function in the options menu called Tate. When you activate it, it actually rotates the screen. I mean… What? It’s not like we are playing on a mobile device. Or have our screens placed vertically instead of horizontally? Does this signal a badly done port from another device? Whatever the case might be, it just doesn’t fit.
- Feels cluttered: Even though there isn’t much on the screen being blasted towards your face, it still felt awfully cluttered and basically not easy to look at. All the moving parts and fast moving projectiles (theirs! yours move like they’re on their pension already), really doesn’t seem to work for Zeroptian Invasion. I don’t know if it was meant to be like this, but god I hope they do look at it and make it look and play a bit smoother, and less cluttered. The fact could be that due to the huge side images as you can clearly see in the screenshots, the cropped space amplifies this feeling. So please, remove those images and give us the entire field of vision! Please!
★ Score: 52%
It feels like this could have been better. For the amount of content it gives, the price seems fair, you can’t get much better at this price range. But still, the polish felt a bit off. Though to give them credit, it did still give me that old arcade vibe from way back when arcades were still a thing, and space invaders were still present before it got replaced by fancier games. Though not the best game out there, it sure could’ve been worse. So heck, you might want to give it a shot if you have some spare change still laying around and you don’t have anything else to spend it on.
Developer: Josyanf1 Publisher: Ratalaika Games
Played on: Xbox One X Also available on: PS4 – Switch and PC
Alexis spent 40 minutes flying and dodging weenies!
Achievement difficulty for 1000 Gamerscore: 25 minutes… Yup…
Perfect for: Anyone who has spare change. Arcade lovers.
Xbox Game Store link: Click here