Teslapunk is a 2D shoot-em-up with its roots in the arcades of the 1980’s. Emperor Zangórax has launched an attack on earth and it's your job to defend earth from Mars most fanatical leader who masquerades as a DJ at night, strange but true. You fight your way through six varied levels each with their own unique style.
Describing the gameplay on offer here is as simple as it gets. You control your ship through seemingly endless waves of enemy ships which are constantly appearing from the top of the screen. Each enemy has its own movement and fire pattern. You get shot you die. You hit an enemy ship you die. You start each game with a set of continues but once you have exhausted them when you die it's game over and you will have to start all the way from the beginning. Games don't get much simpler than that.
You have a certain amount of help but that all comes down to how brave and skillful you are feeling. Every alien you kill drops a blue cube which you need to collect so you can begin to fill up you ships power gauge. There are levels to this power gauge and each one is more powerful than the next. If you can power up the first level you can use a super blast that destroys all bullets on screen at that time and also boosts your multiplier. Continue to power up and you can use it to activate the invulnerable mode which does exactly what it sounds like.
When you you have mastered the single player game you should give survival mode a blast. This is a really bare bones version of the single player mode. Your movement is limited to left and right only and it's frustrating at first because you have been use to full screen movement but you soon get into the swing of things. The big switch is that the enemies do not move at all. They are in lines of various sizes and lengths and they spew out from the top of the screen at an alarming rate and the longer you survival the quicker the screen moves. I thought the single player mode was hard but survival mode is mental.
Survival Mode does offer you help in the form of upgrades. These run the usual gamut of increasing the power of your weapons, your ships ability to absorb damage and you can also purchase brand new ships which each have their own different traits, speed, power, defence, etc, etc. You can also purchase smart bombs and various other boosts before you start the game.
The soundtrack really does invoke the arcades of the past and helps to set the tone perfectly. The pumping synth bass heavy soundtrack does a brilliant job even though it's short and can become repetitive after a while it serves it's purpose well.
Old school shoot-em-ups are all over ID@XBOX at the moment but Teslapunk offers up a unique twist with its distinctive spin on survival mode. Had this just been the six level single player mode I would have marked this down. If you like your games to punish you for every minor mistake then Teslapunk will be right up your street.
Review copy supplied by XCN.
Game: Teslapunk.
Genre: Shoot em up.
Developer: KlutzGames.
Publisher: KlutzGames.
Platform(s): Xbox One.