Dysnomia

If you’ve played any top-down shooters before, you know the drill. You’re a single survivor, and your job is to solve a vague mystery and, far more importantly, save your own hide. In Dysnomia, the mystery surrounds what has happened to a small outer space outpost. Your ship (rather roughly) lands on the surface, and you need to collect supplies for your ship while uncovering the truth behind the monster-infested station. Well…I suppose “sole survivor” isn’t wholly accurate: The game also offers a jump-in two player mode, and both players share the same screen in the frantic bug-blasting chaos.

Gameplay is about what you’d expect from the genre: A Twin Stick Shooter control scheme and various scattered power-ups to tantalize you, but there are a few quirks. The primary ruffle you’ll run into is the concept of AI Boards. AI Boards are used for everything: From checking emails to re-arming turrets to opening doors, you’ll be counting them carefully, and making sure that you’ve pulled the useless ones when you’re done. But AI Boards aren’t the only problem (although, considering your ship also needs 40 of these suckers, they are a big one) – your ship needs more repairs, including lethally-radioactive fuel rods. Yeah, you have to carry a life-draining sucker all the way back to your ship. Eight times. Ouch.

Speaking of carrying things back to your ship, one of the things Dysnomia does great is the back-tracking. Because you have a ‘start point’ (your ship) that you need to return to, the game is able to cram a lot of detail into the maps and levels, and I appreciate that. Monsters spawn continuously, which is something that I wasn’t fond of to start with, but I suppose that it’s necessary to prevent the player from getting bored with the running around.

The game is very well done, and I’m seriously rooting for it in the DreamBuildPlay competition. If you at all like the top-down shooters, you’ll have fun with Dysnomia’s depth and complexity – it really has exemplified the genre well. The two-player is easy, fun, and jump-in is certainly the way to go, while the ‘save anywhere’ option doesn’t make gaming a chore. My only serious gripe about Dysnomia is that it IS an exemplification of the genre – while some of the ship repair and AI Board options are neat, I didn’t feel wowed by any creative freshness – if you like the genre, you’ll love this. If you’re looking for something new…well, maybe not.

Either way, the game is exceedingly well-done, a great benefit to XBLIG, and a serious contender in DreamBuildPlay,