A Mission For Brena

I played until the boss, then gave up. Good game, overall. Needs more screenshots on its page, though. Hehe, here's a quick one.

The game is a vertical scrolling shooter that seems to take place in outer space? It's simple enough: you move around your ship and shoot enemies that appear onscreen. Each enemy you shoot gives you credits, which you use to upgrade elements of Health, Speed, Attack and Distance.

I found myself upgrading the Attack first, since it seemed like the gun would heat up super quickly. But also, the speed became important in closing the distance faster. Distance is a onetime purchase that you can upgrade for a total of 1300 credits, which will allow you to start at a closer point to the boss.

The level itself seemed pretty tedious upon first playing. Upon getting the speed, things started to get more engaging, and at just the right pace. I like how the enemies' bullets sort of act as homing bullets, which makes it harder to sneak past them.

If there's any upgrade I would complain about, it's the Distance one. Well, it probably has to do more with the difficulty, to say the least. The difficulty is dependent on the density of the same enemy over and over. So by starting at a closer distance to the enemy, the player is basically required to shoot down a spam ton of enemies - also shooting bullets galore - with their forward shooting pistol that heats up fast. In fact, I don't even think it would be possible to close the last 100 or so distance with a weapon that didn't constantly overheat, not with the number of hits it takes to kill the enemy ships and soforth. Maybe consider less enemies in that area, or different upgrades for the weapons that allow you to destroy surrounding ships or shield yourself.

Also, another suggestion would be that if you want to keep the bunch of enemies near the boss, then give the player some temporary invincibility when hit, such that they're not vulnerable to being suddenly drained of over half their health by the time they reach the boss (and have that boss' attacks knock off a pretty big portion of health as well).

I did quite enjoy the boss battle, despite not beating it. I just find getting to the boss battle a bit tedious, what with the giant concentration of enemies that come before it.

The graphics are pretty simple, but overall have that GameBoy look to them. I love the HUD. The music's fitting as well, made for some great headbobbing tunes to listen to while grinding in the beginning. Sound effects would make a perfect touch.

Overall, I found the game engaging for a while, but its lack of variety in the difficulty, save for the boss battle, didn't compel me to complete it (at least, not for now).