Lovers In A Dangerous Spacetime Review

Â

Â

Â

Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a new-ish Indie game on Steam and Xbox One by developers Asteroid Base, who are obviously going for a theme here. Before we dig into the meat of this succulent review allow me to say something here, I really enjoyed this game but I was under a tight schedule while reviewing it; so if I miss out on a point of interest or the story dispenses chocolate blowjobs at the end and I rank it at 55/100, please forgive me.

Intense Space Fight.

The story of Interuniversal Romancers is as follows: the entirety of your space age civilization utilizes this strange energy known as love. But the machine that harvests said fantasy energy wasn’t taken in for repairs when its warranty ran out so it broke, releasing untold cosmic horror upon the galaxy, which is ingeniously known as Anti-love. This Anti-love is enslaving your people, taking over the galaxy and just generally being dicks, so you have to stop them. You are a lover, this society’s version of a space adventurer, so you are tasked with saving your race and the universe from the Anti-love. You can also be a human, a glob of what appears to be tar with eyes, or a sentient lemon who is travelling with their dog. So it’s a story of how love conquers all, but guns are still more effective than hugs and therefore you will be shooting people a lot. I’m going to say this now, the story did not enthrall me. I got no real sense of the stakes or the end goal, I was just meant to kill bosses.

The characters also didn’t entice me, what with the narrator type just spouting off the same jokes you would hear in a Saturday morning cartoon about 8 years ago. On my first time I opted as the human character and chose the dog as my pet, believing that he might follow orders better than a cat, but as soon as I reloaded my save the next day, I found that you could change your character basically whenever. The main characters are literally so interchangeable that the story isn’t even fazed when the heroic man of earth and his trusty canine are replaced with a sentient lemon and his fucking cat! There are other games that have done this, like Risk of Rain, and they too allow for the intermittent changing of characters; but the characters you unlock in those games have different abilities and drastically change your play style, while characters in Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime are just there to look pretty and be mildly amusing. Not every game has to have engaging characters or even characters who alter the game world, but why would you waste time and effort making several characters who change nothing when you could have made one with different cosmetic items? This is something I would expect from a flash game, and I just simply don’t understand it.

Exploring where no man and his dog have explored before.

The game didn’t attempt to make a dark and gritty environment, but opted for an arcadey retro feel; with bright colours and an upbeat soundtrack to remind you of the days Donkey Kong used to bully you for quarters. To the game’s credit, this works pretty well, effectively putting you in the right mind set for the game, and every level is intuitively designed. However, something about it didn’t really stick in the end. Perhaps it’s because the adorable factor this game is going for just didn’t tug at the pitch black stone I have for a heart, but I started to find the cuteness of everything a little bit creepy. It was ominous how upbeat the game was when I was effectively murdering an entire species. It reminded me of that scene in Gamer, when the controlled people are in that colourful environment and one girl breaks her leg, then everyone just starts laughing. But the visuals work well with the game play and the levels are interesting at least, which is why this area scored as high as it did. The game isn’t gorgeous, but it trades off sparkly graphics for functionality, which is something I can get behind all day! The sound track also deserves a mention, due to its bright upbeat tone, but it never really gets past the upbeat tone. I would have rated it higher if they tried to create more ambience with it, but I suppose that kind of track suits a quirky shooter thing like this. Looking at the age rating however, it is easy to excuse these bright colours and simple tracks as the result of appealing to one’s audience, but all in all I think no excuse is necessary. The game needs these tracks and bright colours to give it that individuality it so craves for, whilst frantically ignoring Hotline Miami’s individuality.

Now we get to what we are really here for, the gameplay. This game has a solid gameplay design, incorporating the AI partner into the combat and allowing for fast-paced and frantic space action. It’s not perfect, obviously, and it has a few nuisances. For instance, most of the features that I really enjoyed in the end are really only understandable then, in the end. I powered through the game on Casual difficulty, until about the third Campaign’s boss, and I only figured the effects of all the gems about then. This game has a tutorial level that drowns you in guides, but as soon as you get your first gem it suddenly hushes up. Another thing is the difficulty. I began my play through on Normal difficulty, believing it to be the intermediary level, but I was completely owned within the first Campaign, during a wormhole level. I tried again about 4 times before swallowing my pride and switching to Casual in order to meet my deadline, and I cruised through it without losing any health. If I could offer some advice; firstly, give me a mid-wormhole checkpoint please, so I don’t have to fight through 11 waves of enemies just to die on the 12th wave and star all over again; second, try renaming the difficulty settings, so I know that Normal actually means the Gauntlet of Satan difficulty. Take all of these criticisms how you will, but just remember that the gameplay is so involving and fitting that they usually just melt away. It really simulates a space battle well, making your ship move slow enough to keep things tense but giving you enough opportunity to turn it around.

My final criticism for the developers is that online co-op is a must in this day and age, while local co-op only really works for the Xbox One because consoles were built for local multiplayer. I wanted to try out the multiplayer, but none of my friends were on hand and my Colombian slave children had just escaped so I officially have no opinion on it.