HYPERDRIVE is an infinite shoot-em-up. You control a spaceship and go through waves of enemies, defeating them all until you inevitably die. Your entire goal is to go for a high score, so it’s like an old arcade game in that aspect. You get 5 lives, and once those are gone, you’re done. You also do die in one hit, which is something that seems fairly common in these old shoot-em-ups.
The spaceship actually has a lot in its arsenal. You move around using the arrow keys and shoot using the “Z” key, which just fires a laser. If these were the only controls, then I'd probably have abandoned the idea of doing this article, but there’s a bit more to it than that. Holding the “X” key charges up a huge laser, which fires once the key is released. This huge laser is powerful and can one-shot most enemies, but you will have to wait for the laser to cool down before releasing another charge shot. You can also use the “C” key to dash around, but I never used it, just because I never thought to use it in the heat of battle. But that's not all, powerups randomly drop throughout the game. These powerups come in three flavors, Triple Shot, Quick Fire, and Invincibility. They don’t seem like a lot on paper, but add some layer of depth to the gameplay, and in tight situations, they can be extremely beneficial, and even necessary for your survival.
The enemy variety is pretty good too. Enemies seem to be scaled by difficulty, with later waves introducing harder enemies. I’m not sure how many enemy types are in HYPERDRIVE, seeing as I’ve only made it to wave 13, but I’ve seen 5 different enemy types. I’m not going to describe all of them, because that would be boring, but there is one enemy I’d like to bring attention to, and funnily enough, it's the very first enemy you will see. The eyeball as I will call it, only shoots 2 shots at you, which doesn’t sound bad, but this enemy has killed me a lot. What makes these 2 shots kind of annoying is that when they are near the bottom of the screen, they begin to home in on you. If you're not paying attention, this will catch you off guard, and kill you. I swear I've died more to this guy than the others in my runs, which does kind of make me question why he’s the first enemy in the game. One notable thing about enemy projectiles is that they can be destroyed with your lasers, so it’s not necessarily just dodging them, it's destroying them so you can maneuver around safely, which is something I do appreciate.
A standout part of HYPERDRIVE is its presentation. The game is pretty, it uses an 8-bit art style, which is common in a lot of indies, but for good reason. The thing I like the most about the art style is the use of two colors. You see these two colors in the game's logo, green, and purple. In the game, everything that is green represents you, and things that will help you, while purple represents the enemies. I like the color dynamic, it’s aesthetically pleasing and makes the game stick out to me. It’s definitely an aspect that makes the game memorable to me.
So what do I think about the game? Well, I should mention that I'm awful at shoot-em-ups, and a lot of them are off-putting to me, but I enjoyed HYPERDRIVE. I think the extra mechanics, such as the charge, and the powerups, add plenty to the experience. Add the art style to it, and you have a memorable experience. I’ve played many games like this, and a lot of them fail to bring anything to the table that makes them stand out to me, but HYPERDRIVE is an exception. The only issue I had with HYPERDRIVE was a bug where the movement controls would get locked up. I have no idea if this is an in-game issue, or if I am accidentally pushing a key on my keyboard by mistake. Outside of that, I really enjoyed HYPERDRIVE. If I had to suggest anything, I’d recommend adding a wave select mechanic, so that you can start at the later waves, to practice dealing with later enemies.
As I said earlier, I’ve played a lot of shoot-em-ups on itch.io, and almost none of them stood out to me, because they just took the basic route, and felt generic. HYPERDRIVE, although doesn’t do anything groundbreaking, does make a memorable experience in my opinion, and that's the most important thing. Anyone can make a space shoot-em-up but it's up to you to make yours stand out, and Snerds does this very well. I recommend checking out HYPERDRIVE, and Snerds. If you’re reading this, I hope this game did well in your class, and I hope to see future updates. This has been Travis and have a great day.
Click here to play HYPERDRIVE, and click here to watch my gameplay video for HYPERDRIVE.
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