Bought this on a whim, after seeing it on Mechanic Arm's website, but left it alone; the day after HG101 publishes an article on it, prompting me to play it.
One thing for sure: I like the graphics a lot. Steel Empire is set in a steampunk world where everything seems to be truly powered by steam and mixed with a Jule Verne's book. There are subtle light-sourcing effects (if they can be defined as such), all sprites are finely detailed, the parallax scrolling looks great, and the bigger sprites are a joy to see.
The music overshadows the boring sound effects, and each composition greatly fits the level it accompanies: I doubt they used an actual theremin to record the BGM on the last level, but it surely sounds like they did, and it sounds perfect.
I'm not so sold on the game itself though, it's way too easy.
In Steel Empire you can chose between a plane and a blimp: the plane is agile but fragile, the blimp sturdy but slow. Both have a life bar, and you lose one life when that is depleted; recovery items (heart icon) are usually made available halfway through a stage and before bosses. Other powerups include bonus point ($ icon), extra bombs (B icon) bits to accompany the chose ship (O icon), and a P icon that will increase the ship's firepower after collecting three of them.
Bits are lost upon death, but the ship's power is kept upon death, between levels and after continuing. The risk of being underpowered in the middle of a boss fight is essentially none, but it also makes the ship underpowered in the beginning, as all enemies take more than one hit to die. In hard mode, bombs are often used to clear the screen from enemies because your firepower isn't enough to compensate, and even in normal mode the final boss takes a million hits (probably more) before dying, and there I used almost all my bombs just because I wanted the fight to end, as it wasn't particularly thrilling.
Normal mode can be completed without continues even at the first try, and right now I'm halfway through hard mode with just one life lost.
Not exactly the most refined of shooters, but it's fairly competent in what it does.
One thing for sure: I like the graphics a lot. Steel Empire is set in a steampunk world where everything seems to be truly powered by steam and mixed with a Jule Verne's book. There are subtle light-sourcing effects (if they can be defined as such), all sprites are finely detailed, the parallax scrolling looks great, and the bigger sprites are a joy to see.
The music overshadows the boring sound effects, and each composition greatly fits the level it accompanies: I doubt they used an actual theremin to record the BGM on the last level, but it surely sounds like they did, and it sounds perfect.
I'm not so sold on the game itself though, it's way too easy.
In Steel Empire you can chose between a plane and a blimp: the plane is agile but fragile, the blimp sturdy but slow. Both have a life bar, and you lose one life when that is depleted; recovery items (heart icon) are usually made available halfway through a stage and before bosses. Other powerups include bonus point ($ icon), extra bombs (B icon) bits to accompany the chose ship (O icon), and a P icon that will increase the ship's firepower after collecting three of them.
Bits are lost upon death, but the ship's power is kept upon death, between levels and after continuing. The risk of being underpowered in the middle of a boss fight is essentially none, but it also makes the ship underpowered in the beginning, as all enemies take more than one hit to die. In hard mode, bombs are often used to clear the screen from enemies because your firepower isn't enough to compensate, and even in normal mode the final boss takes a million hits (probably more) before dying, and there I used almost all my bombs just because I wanted the fight to end, as it wasn't particularly thrilling.
Normal mode can be completed without continues even at the first try, and right now I'm halfway through hard mode with just one life lost.
Not exactly the most refined of shooters, but it's fairly competent in what it does.
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