I have never experienced the game Asteroids. I’ve only ever heard of it in retro videos and articles. But Solaroids: Prologue is a game that takes the vision of the classic arcade shooter and remakes it to modern standards.
Asteroids
When I first heard that Solaroids was a redone vision of Asteroids, naturally I had to research its predecessor. Released in 1979 by Atari Inc., Asteroids was an arcade shooter set around shooting up enemy spaceships and asteroids while not crashing into them. It was a major hit back in the golden age of gaming selling over 70,000 arcade cabinets. Asteroids would later inspire the creation of other games such as Defender, Gravitar, and now Solaroids.
Like most arcade games, Soldaroids is revolves around one or two concepts, this one being a shooter. You fly around in a spaceship shooting asteroids and enemy vessels. In the campaign mode, the game introduces you slowly into the game with simple enemies and power-ups. As the game progresses, it slowly ramps up the difficulty until it becomes standard. Finishing the campaign unlocks free mode, which is what I consider the standard game. It’s an interesting system and I think it is a brilliant idea on the developer’s part.
At first I found the gameplay extremely difficult. It was infuriating as I originally thought that keyboard users would always be at a disadvantage. Thankfully I managed to find the control style options.
I still have trouble controlling the spaceship considering that you move through space with a joystick or your mouse while being able to access movement in all four directions. It makes it hard for someone like me, but it’s still a solid game. I love the added weapons and upgrades you can get, sort of making it roguelike. It’s a decision I can get behind even though it’s sometimes difficult to grab the upgrades. I would like to see more added into the game, maybe different spaceships with different abilities. Even a couple of perks to dabble more into the roguelike genre.
Art Style and Music
I find art style reminiscent of retro, or what I perceive as retro. The art has obviously been designed well in this day and age. The enemies are color-coordinated and easy to distinguish. Their shading could be tweaked more as the enemies look quite generic. It keeps the retro feel and has modern additions, which are done incredibly successfully.
The music fits the art very well, and gives me chills every time I open up the game. It gives the startup such a good arcade vibe, so great job. Overall, there’s not much to improve on, I believe it’s suited to the game.
Conclusion
Solaroids is a simple arcade shooter that is great. Since it’s in it’s early stages right now there could be new additions here and there. But overall I like where the developers are going with this game. The gameplay was enjoyable, art and music was fine. Overall I am definitely anticipating the full release of this game.
