Explosionade

Developer: Mommy’s Best Games | Publisher: Mommy’s Best Games | Release Date: 2015 | Genre: Action / Indie | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

While the rest of his friends are busy storming a Horronym fortress in a final assault, First Lieutenant Terry Atticus finds himself all alone back at the base. Apparently, his superior didn’t take too kindly to some pipes in the officer’s latrine that Atticus accidentally reversed. Thus, the hapless lieutenant is missing out on the biggest battle ever. However, while rooting around in the supply room, Atticus discovers a prototype mech, which he promptly takes into the sewers for some target practice. Instead of finding the snakebats he was expecting, Atticus discovers a whole bunch of aliens and takes it upon himself to take them all out.

Explosionade is another one of Mommy’s Best Games that was initially released on Xbox 360 in 2010 and is now making its long overdue PC début. The game looks and feels like an old SNK arcade title where your goal is to clear rooms full of alien enemies. There is no exploration, and players can complete each room in less than a minute, so it is all about causing as much death and destruction with your mech as possible. Your primary weapon is a gun that can be fired in any direction, but the mech is also equipped with potent grenades. The grenades are lobbed with an arc and can be set to either stick to objects or bounce, depending on how long you hold down the fire button. Most rooms feature walls and floors that can be destroyed with grenades, but unlike your gun, the grenades come with a short reloading time to prevent you from tossing them in a continuous stream. If you want to fire grenades without the reloading time, you need to collect enough of the gold scattered around the rooms to activate your “Meganade Rush.” Gold is also used to repair your mech, so don’t pass up an opportunity to grab a pile.

While you can head straight for the exit on each level, you’ll be missing out on a lot of points. Killing everything that moves and collecting all the gold is more satisfying and results in a better score. This Steam version of the game also comes with new leaderboards for some extra motivation. In addition to being able to jump and hover for a short period, your mech also comes with a handy multi-purpose shield. The shield makes you impervious to enemy fire, and you can even bounce enemy grenades off it with good timing. In addition, you can activate your shield just before hitting the floor or a wall after jumping to perform a nifty shield bounce to reach greater heights. However, the shield overheats very quickly and must recharge between uses.

It has been a few years since the original release of Explosionade, but thanks to the 2D visual style of the game, it doesn’t look too dated. The color palette is a bit muted, and the backgrounds are limited as the entire game is set in a sewer, but the screen-filling bosses and hand-drawn animations still look good. You can zoom in on the action with a button to take a closer look at your enemies or zoom out for a better view of your surroundings. While a couple more enemy types would have been nice, we really like the designs of the ones present in the game. Enemies are also not stupid and will take cover or run away from grenades tossed at them. Explosionade doesn’t feature any voice acting for the short exchanges between Atticus and his superior, but the rest of the audio is quite good. The game works best with a gamepad as it plays a bit like a twin-stick shooter, but playing it with a keyboard and mouse is also manageable.

Apart from including leaderboards, this PC version of the game also features achievements and trading cards. Although short, it is an entertaining title we wholeheartedly recommend to shooter fans who might have missed it on Xbox 360. It also has a very reasonable price tag, but we suggest grabbing the entire Mommy’s Best Action Pack to get the best value.

Although Explosionade is an action-packed title, it comes with multiple difficulty settings to ensure players of all skill levels have a fair shot at completing it. Just like the arcade games of old, it is possible to finish all the levels quickly, but the real challenge comes from upping the difficulty and increasing the gameplay speed while aiming for a high score. Players who enjoy beating their own scores or competing with others on the leaderboards will find that Explosionade has a lot of replay value. The game also features a co-op mode, which is a lot of fun.