PixelJunk Raiders

Stadia

With its long-running PixelJunk series, Q-Games has taken familiar genres and imprinted them with its own idiosyncratic personality. Now with its latest entry, developed for Google’s streaming platform, it’s taking a stab at the modern Roguelike. This is something of a change of pace for the Kyoto studio, whose projects are often rooted in retro and arcade nostalgia. That it should seek to break out of its comfort zone is something worth celebrating, but in execution, Raiders is an excursion into new territory that hasn’t entirely paid off.

An unexplained cosmic anomaly has engulfed the planet Tantal, flooding this normally peaceful desert world with violent, tentacled aliens. Embarking on a rescue mission, your unnamed character uses a remotely controlled avatar to travel to the surface, fight off the invaders and rescue the planet’s inhabitants – who have no weapons or, seemingly, any ability to do anything other than stand and watch you do all the work. It’s light on story to the point where it fades almost entirely into the background. Plot is far from vital to a Roguelike’s success, but some motivation to keep exploring, beyond unlocking more missions, would be welcome.

Begin a mission – all of which are given randomised names such as Unexpected Dream Parrot and Fully Magnificent Scooter – and your avatar spawns in a large, procedurally generated landscape. Survivors can be found in towns, camps and underground dwellings; rescuing them all completes the mission. When you start playing, it’s tempting to head straight for the Tantalians, but in doing so you’re likely to be overwhelmed by enemies. PixelJunk Raiders is a surprisingly unforgiving game, and wading in unprepared almost always results in a sudden and ignominious death. The various breeds of alien all have clearly telegraphed, easily dodged attacks, which is fine when you’re fighting just one. But all it takes is a couple more joining in to make things tricky.

This is where the game’s core loop reveals itself. You soon realise that it’s wise, if not essential, to skirt the edges of the settlements where the survivors congregate first, searching ruins for gear – swords, shields, giant hammers – and smashing containers which improve your stats (attack, defence and so on) on a per-mission basis. This becomes routine: scavenge the outer regions of the map to power up your avatar, then charge into the built-up areas to fight the aliens standing between you and the Tantalians. It’s a compelling enough structure for a Roguelike, but the problem with PixelJunk Raiders is that it simply isn’t much fun to play.

Rescuing the Tantalians is ostensibly the point of the game, yet doing so is deeply unsatisfying. You approach them and hold a button, watch a meter fill as your character stands stock-still, and the survivor is teleported away. There’s no dialogue, no visual feedback and barely any animation. For something you do perhaps 20 times per mission, it’s a bizarrely anticlimactic interaction. The mute Tantalians seem more like oversized collectibles than sentient beings, which makes the rescue process feel disappointingly hollow. Sometimes you must complete a fetch quest before you’re allowed to rescue one, but these underwhelming procedurally generated tasks (travel halfway across the map to open a chest, then trudge back, to give one example) never feel like a productive use of your time.

This static, lifeless feeling leaks into other parts of the game, too. There’s almost no environmental audio to colour the world, merely a silent void accompanied by a repetitive synth soundtrack that soon outstays its welcome. The procedural world generation rarely results in anything truly surprising or stimulating. Character movement feels rigid, with no real sense of momentum or weight. It’s a shame, since the overall art direction – inspired by vintage sci-fi comics, notably the vividly colourful and influential art of Jean ‘Moebius’ Giraud – is quite beautiful. Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert wrote a custom algorithm to colourise the game in a way that mimics the pages of the comics he read in the ’70s and ’80s, and the effect is striking.

We also have a soft spot for the super jump. Hold a button down to charge it, let go and watch as your avatar leaps for miles – which you can extend by activating the rocket boosters on your boots before you hit the ground. It’s an enjoyable way to get around, particularly if you climb a mountain and leap from the peak. The combat, although ultimately rather weightless and basic, has its moments too. Enemies can be locked onto, allowing you to spin and pirouette to avoid their attacks. Holding your own while surrounded by a large crowd of aliens can be thrilling, and gadgets such as proximity mines and turrets can be dropped mid-battle to give you a helping hand (although the fact weapons can break, when there are so few of them around, is likely to test your patience).

As you complete missions your rank rises, earning you upgrades that, over time, make your avatar more formidable. The game is never easy, but getting access to these abilities softens the challenge a little. As your rank increases, more difficult missions are generated with bigger enemies, rarer weapons and more varied landscapes, including shadowy forests and immense towers. This progression system is paced well.

Even so, we reach a point where the thought of slogging through yet another samey level with 15 more survivors to rescue overtakes our desire to level up and see what new trinkets the game has to throw at us. As enamoured by the vibrant art as we are, in the end there isn’t much else to love here. In a world where games such as Hades, Slay The Spire and Into The Breach have found ways to elevate the Roguelike to new heights,

PixelJunk Raiders sadly fails to make a mark.

Plot is far from vital to a Roguelike’s success, but some motivation to keep exploring would be welcome