Revolution 60

So, hey, there’s this blog I post on? Since when did that happen?

Revolution 60, produced by freshman indie team Giant Spacekat, is one of several games that I’ve been meaning to post about for some time. Released a month or two, it’s a sci-fi-themed adventure game, following the adventures of a Special Forces team attempting to regain control of a rogue space station. While mostly linear, it follows the Mass Effect model of offering frequent conversational options which affect the outcome of the story, tied with CRPG-ish combat and QTEs to move the plot along.

The plot is the main attraction; while the developers call the game an RPG, personally, I’d say it shares more in common with adventure games. The plot itself is pretty solid; it follows the adventures of a special forces team dispatched to liberate a space station from enemy forces- naturally, things go south quickly, and our heroes are forced to do the best they can in an environment with rapidly shifting loyalties and mysterious enemies. It’s a well-told story, offering both solid characterizations and tantalizing hints of the greater world in which the story takes place.

Combat is an action-RPG affair that brings the old Megaman Battle Network games to mind. Your character and the enemy each occupy half of a grid, which you’re free to move around on in more-or-less real time; attacks hit certain portions of the grid, so learning to dodge attacks from each of the game’s handful of enemy types is a must. Each of the game’s half-dozen enemy types comes with enough attacks aimed at restricting movement or controlling parts of the grid to keep things feeling fresh. My biggest issue with the combat is that it feels like the game’s early fights are twice as long as they should be- at that point, neither you nor your enemies have a whole lot of options, so it feels like running down their lifebar is an endurance match rather than a challenge. Control can be a little laggy at times, but I never really felt like I was being cheated by it (note that I played the iPhone version; this may be better on the iPad version of the game).

QTEs weave in and out through many of the game’s systems- they’re tied to both your ‘special attacks’ in combat and ‘action scenes’ in the ‘adventure’ section of the game. They’re relatively well-implemented here; there’s generally little penalty for failure in the adventure sections (often this amounts to getting a slightly different scene, or repeating the scene until you’re successful). Some of the gestures required can be a little flaky at times, but they worked pretty well on the most part; I think the game would be awfully flat without them, honestly.

While the ‘full’ game is a bit on the pricey side as iOS games go, it’s just that- a full game that’s neither tied to microtransactions nor a glorified match-3. There’s a pretty significant demo, too. I’d strongly recommend giving it a try- it’s a solid first outing for Giant Spacekat, and shows a lot of potential for future games in the series. It’s currently iOS-only and available here.

– HC