Just Lovecraft-flavored arenas that spawn countless loosely Lovecraft-themed monsters. No stealth, no watching patrol paths for your window of opportunity, no finding keys and opening doors. This one most resembles the unfettered destruction of Crimsonland. Now comes Tesla vs Lovecraft, 10tons’ well deserved love letter to themselves. Next there’s Time Recoil, which was, well… Okay, look, they can’t all be winners. Which tools will you bring to bear? Which tools will you upgrade? Which challenges will you try to beat this time? Jydge is among my favorite twin-stick shooters for it’s discrete single-servings of laser-focused top-down violence. Dead in 30 seconds! Try one more time and this time you’ll get it! But unlike Hotline Miami, it’s all about your loadout. It’s like Hotline Miami’s quick violent outbursts. It’s comprised of discrete hand-made levels, each with several micro challenges that force you to mix up how you play and which upgrades you use. Jydge is a more focused game, using the Neon Chrome engine, destructibility, and cyberpunk aesthetic. Neon Chrome is among my favorite rogue-likes and action RPGs. Have I been to this part yet? If the furniture is shattered, the walls are shattered, the floors are charred, and blood is splattered everywhere, then, yes, I’ve been through here. The levels have the glorious destructibility that reminds you when you’ve been through an area. It’s a crawl, something stealthily, through cyberpunk dungeons. Between permadeaths, you pour money into improved attributes. You’ll find new weapons and abilities which get shuffled into the random loot. Neon Chrome is a full-fledged action RPG rogue-like with lots of advancement as you play.
Since Crimsonland, they’ve reined it in a bit, gotten more numbers-oriented, more meticulous, with an emphasis on advancement, both in the twin-stickery and between the twin-stickery. I’m pretty sure Crimsonland explored all of them, as well as a few that had never occurred to me. There are only so many ways you can make stuff blow up. Their original, Crimsonland, was a balls-to-the-wall swarm management game with crazily over-powered power-ups that were crazy and powerful and overpowered and sometimes crazy. Using the basic vocabulary of pushing sticks around to shoot and move, 10tons made several distinct gameplay experiences over the years.
With Tesla vs Lovecraft, they’ve gone back to their first love. Since then, they’ve done various workaday projects - anyone for a round of Sparkle 2 on the iPad? - but their heart is clearly in the top-down wholesale slaughter of innumerable dumb enemies.
10tons Ltd., an indie developer in Finland, has been making twin-stick shooters since 2003, when they released Crimsonland.
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