Game:

GRIDD: Retroenhanced (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 5:03

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12

Learn more about it at http://griddgame.com/
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Something that I never really looked into is the independent scene in my country, Italy, I guess because it goes under the radar of the bigger news sources most of the time, or just because it’s very small. Regardless of that, it’s time to fix the situation because today I bring to you Gridd: Retroenhanced by Antab Studio, a three people development team from Milano.

I got the chance to talk to them and try a demo of the game, and it was very interesting and educational too, if so I can say, because it gave me many insights on how the game was developed code wise and the game design choices.

Gridd: Retroenhanced is an arcade shooter inspired by Hacker Movies and the Neos 80’s aestethic. The player picks the role of a digital ship with the objective to penetrate a mainframe and defeat all the opposition in the way.

The ship accelerates along the “track” with the possibility to strafe and change height, and the cannons can be fired by holding down a button, thank goodness that’s automatic firing or my fingers would be dead by now. The aiming automatically locks on the nearest target with the possibility to strafe a bit to dodge all the obstacles.

The main gamemode is Arcade, that follows what I guess can be called the “attack on the mainframe”. The idea is simple, one try and if you fail it’s back to the start. The game never changes between a playthrough and the other, so you will eventually get it. But believe me, it’s hard, despite the fact there’s a sort of “adaptive difficulty” in it. As I was explained, the games becomes easier if the player is performing badly, to then get back to the standard difficulty if the player starts doing better.
As the game progresses you will gather kilobytes, which is the scoring unit, with a multiplier that increases based on your performance. Other powerups that give shield, restore health or give additional firepower. I said you have just one try, even though it’s not exactly like that, you can get an extra ship by succesfully hacking backdoors.

Now, the developers will be after me because they told me they went for a no tutorial approach, they wanted the player to discover the obstacles and the enemies as they appeared, but I will quickly explain you how to succesfully hack a backdoor. The spinning polygon at the top highlights one number after the other, destroying it “locks” on one of the number. When a number is locked you have to collect all the numbers appearing on the highway, if necessary on multiple tries, to unlock the number. If all three numbers are unlocked before time runs out the backdoor is succesfully hacked.

Once you have completed the arcade mode the endless mode is unlocked. I’d like to show you footage of it, but I’m not good enough yet to complete Arcade mode, let alone Endless. I’ve been told by the developers it’s meant to be an harder challenge compared to Arcade, this time around with pseudorandomized obstacles.

A note of merit also goes to the soundtrack, written by the australian musician Dream Fiend, that was written concurrently to the game, basically the developers sent screenshots of the game the musician based the music on, and the soundtrack is well spot on as you can hear yourself.

And that’s about it for the content of Gridd Retronhanced. If you like intense arcade shooters or neo-80’s styled games you should find food for your teeth.
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The New Iteration of Conso's Video Games Perspectives tries to address the issues with the First iteration, meaning uninteresting videos and lack of enthusiam and committment by the creator. The mission is to create more informative and interesting content without it being chocked by imposed deadlines. The general objective is every two weeks, but not as strict.

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