Avoid – Sensory Overload

Developer: 48h Studio | Publisher: Strategy First | Release Date: 2014 | Genre: Action / Indie | Website: Official Website | Purchase: Steam

Games like Avoid Sensory Overload are pretty popular on mobile devices due to their easy controls and addictive nature, but lately, they have also been making the jump to PC. With titles like Race The Sun, T.E.C 3001, and Rage Runner, PC owners have been spoiled for choice when it comes to these types of endless runners. Avoid Sensory Overload is another entry in the crowded market, but one that fans of the genre will definitely want to check out.

Piloting the FLAK-ST spaceship, it is your job to reach the end of each level in one piece while dodging the obstacles that would prevent you from doing so. Your ship cannot stop or slow down, but its speed increases every few meters, making things a bit challenging. Obstacles come in stationary and moving varieties, along with other challenges such as holes in the path and narrow sections where you can fall off.

The campaign mode consists of levels split into three themes with four difficulty levels each, ranging from easy to extreme. Each difficulty level has eight levels, and the objective is simply to reach the exit. There is no time limit to contend with, and while there are no checkpoints, you get three lives to work with. Each time you lose a life, your ship restarts on the spot where you crashed, but don’t think that this makes the game a walk in the park. While navigating the levels, you will also collect power-ups that do things such as filling in the gaps in the floors, lowering the obstacle blocks in your path, or activating shields. These power-ups activate instantly upon collection and don’t last very long, but they can make a big difference on the higher difficulty levels. The different themes not only have different obstacles, but different power-ups as well for some nice variety.

If you tire of the normal levels, you can try the endless mode, which features randomly generated stages. There is no endpoint to the endless levels, so your goal is to stay alive as long as possible with the one life you are given. You can still collect power-ups, but the score multipliers that dot these levels are even more valuable. Your final score is based on how long you survived and how many score multipliers you collected. There are also leaderboards where you can show off your prowess on each of the themes and difficulty levels.

The visuals in Avoid Sensory Overload are fairly simple but very colorful and quite hypnotic. We like the graphics style as it looks good without being so over the top that it is hard to see what is happening. The draw distance is also very generous, so spotting upcoming obstacles and adjusting your path is easy. The three themes, Electronic, Laserdance, and Synthrock, each feature their own soundtrack, and some of the tunes are rather catchy. The music suits the game and sounds great with a decent pair of headphones as it draws you into the action. Some more tracks would have been nice, but the developers have promised a free theme, which is very generous considering the game’s already low price tag. True to their word, the “Minimal” theme was released in the 1.1.0 update for the game and features its own graphical style and soundtrack. The sound effects don’t really stand out, but the announcer is a nice touch.

The controls are very responsive whether you are using a keyboard or controller. You only have to worry about moving left or right because you cannot jump, and power-ups are activated immediately. This might make the game sound easy, especially compared to something like Rage Runner, but believe us, things can still get very challenging. Players experienced with the genre will find the early levels to be insultingly easy, but bump things up to hard or extreme and it is a different matter altogether.

While Avoid Sensory Overload is not the best game we have played in the genre, it is fun and addictive. Unlike the mobile version, you don’t have to buy any extra themes, and kudos to the developers for not jacking up the price simply because the game is now on Steam. It is also nice to see the addition of Steam achievements and trading cards rounding off the package.

If you are new to the genre, Avoid Sensory Overload provides a very nice introduction. It starts very easy so that newcomers won’t be frustrated, and the price is low enough to make it an impulse purchase that won’t cause any regrets.

*Review originally published April 2014.*