Desert Child Game

Since I started reviewing games, I've found that indies typically have more freedom to answer more philosophical and esoteric questions., developed by Oscar Brittain and published by Akupara Games is a game that does that, even if it doesn't look like it on the surface.A racing RPG about a young man, his trusty hoverbike, and the goal of winning a Grand Prix so he can move from a dying Earth to a vibrant Mars, Desert Child xyzVroom VroomAlthough it might be philosophical in nature, Desert Child is a racing game at heart. Races last about two minutes; you can gain speed by destroying targets along the way or damage opposing racers to slow them down. Of course, your NPC opponents can do the same to you, so you'll need to race with care and employ strategy to get through them in one piece.Of course, you can't win races unless your hoverbike is in shape. Upkeep and customization will determine how difficult the road to victory will be.When you sustain damage, you'll start to notice performance issues, such as your bike getting slower.

Needless to say, keeping your bike in shape is a priority, which you can do at various shops. Customization and Powering UpYou can customize your bike with various parts that yield special effects. Some parts give you more firepower, while others can help you obtain more cash. Some parts can even help you determine when the finish line is coming, helping you cut off your opponents at the right times.You can also increase these effects with battery packs, which you can earn for every race you win.

Desert Child is a Racing game, developed by Oscar Brittain and published by Akupara Games, which was released in 2018. Desert Child has a wonderful sense of style, and there are moments when it clicks. When you jet across the water on your bike firing a shotgun blast that shatters several televisions in front of you, or when you first start to wrap your head around the aesthetic of Mars, the game briefly, but brightly, shines.

So the more you race, the more you'll have available.For example, you can significantly increase your firepower via battery packs, which will let you really wallop your opponents. However, the tradeoff is that it now takes longer to reload your weapon.The beauty here is that this system increases the depth of a game that on the surface, seems relatively simple. The opportunities are broad, and testing out combinations is half the fun.Life In The Big CityWith nothing but a bike to your name, there's a certain feeling that you're on the fringe of society. The game drives this point home further by letting you know you're flat broke - repeatedly.You can't fix your bike, you can't eat, and you most definitely can't enter the Grand Prix if you're penniless. This is where your city life comes into play. It's a big city, after all, and there's a number of ways you can get paid.Sure, you have your share of odd jobs like pizza delivery or race tutoring, but you can find more exciting gigs like bounty hunting or herd-farming as well. You'll also find the occasional dollar testing weapons and doing odd jobs, as well as investment opportunities.

You can, of course, also score payouts from winning races.However, not everything is above board. Head to the red-light district and you'll find some not-so-legal options. You can throw races, damage other vehicles, and even hack bank accounts. Of course, these all net more funds than legitimate jobs, and, of course, these shady jobs do come with consequences: completing any job will raise your wanted level. If it gets high enough cops will come after you.Being Cool For YourselfDesert Child, much like it's influences and aesthetics, prides itself on being unconventionally cool. Visually, you can see that this pixelated adventure isn't very detailed. But the entire game maintains that distinct look.Desert Child's music also fits into that 'cool loner' vibe; with tunes ranging from hip-hop, chill-hop (laidback jazz fusion), lofi-hip-hop, and even vaporwave, the album's worth of songs don't skip a beat.Pros:.

Contents PlotThe game is set 5 years after the events of the original. Originally set to be released in the beginning of 2010, the game's release has been pushed back to September 28th in North America and October 1st in Europe.

Races are fast. Relaxing music. Customizing your bike is funCons:. Visuals aren't the best.

Difficulty spikes up randomly. Controls could be betterDesert Child is a fun game to decompress with.

The entire journey will take you a few hours to play through, all at your own leisure and pace.Every time you get ready to race you can race or chill. If you select chill, you'll see our hero taking a smoke break while the game's soundtrack plays. This is a nice little quality of life option for players; what better way to enjoy your favorite tracks?That sense of operating at your own speed is what makes this game unique to play. Even though you have this looming goal and serious work to do, why stress it? No saving the planet, stopping evil, and all that jazz.

It's just you and that cool hoverbike taking things one race at a time.Fans of indie games, RPGs, and racing games can find Desert Child available on Nintendo Switch eShop, PlayStation Network, Xbox Live, and Steam today.Note: The publisher provided the copy of Desert Child used in this review.

• • Platforms:
  PC PS4 Switch XBO
• Developer: Oscar Brittain
• Publisher:Akupara Games
• Release: December 11, 2018

From the outset, there’s nothing inherently wrong about Desert Child’s leaning on the recent fondness for everything futuristically ’80s, imagery and music alike. Even the baffling craze for vaporwave that combines both mediums — that only the internet could help prosper — manages to keep to its limits without ever coming across as desperately pungent. Even with the already-known premise (albeit jokingly referenced) of getting one’s general self, “your ass” included, to Mars, through a series of daring, hover bike races, doesn’t in itself leave the game open to ridicule. And as the recently-released launch trailer has only cemented, sole developer Oscar Brittain is very much open to marketing his project on already-established cultural phenomenons.

Admitting one’s love for all of these isn’t the problem and any sane person wouldn’t deny a creator his opportunity to express his favored palette. The problem is quickly discovering that this starry-eyed appreciation, comes at the cost of a game that not only falters technically and structurally, but as a consequence is so easily dismissive of a player’s willing patience. If you haven’t guessed it already, Desert Child is fairly guilty on both these counts. That’s not to say that the core gameplay loop — and “loop” is a fitting term, which we’ll get to — of shm’up-styled, side-scrolling races doesn’t throw up some interesting ideas or that the game as a whole isn’t afraid of throwing up a curveball with which players must adapt to.

Some of the fleetingly better moments to be had in Desert Child‘s brief four-to-five hour, three-chapter run-time, are getting stopped by the police seemingly out of nowhere and having to fend off chasing law enforcement so as not to have your hard-earned, allotted money taken away. So too, some of the optional jobs/objectives like herding animals (avoiding recklessly shooting them in the process) or delivering pizza, complete with quirky music to match, aren’t without a sense of goofy charm — justified more so in the way they help deviate away from the regular race-to-the-finish standard of most set-ups. But these deviations, whether that still includes shooting at projectiles along the way or not, are sadly few and far between — easy as it is to get quickly disgruntled moreso at how most missions not only follow the exact same tired formula, but worse, are orchestrated in such a way that it feels like the player at point has no control over the resulting outcome. AI that offers ridiculous amounts of rubber-banding is one example, but doing a terrible job at explaining what one is even required to do is a more notable addition.

One objective in particular, having you “hack” a bank for money, lacks the simple luxury of an explanation as to how one fullfils the requirements or how it fits within the context of another race-to-the-finish set-up. Instead simply thrusting you straight into proceedings, allowing you to shoot at targets for money, before offering zero explanation as to why one has ended up with a static “[Safe] x 0” image. Truth be told, a large portion of Desert Child‘s main “racing” gameplay is rather ploddingly dull to begin with; no matter how many times you find yourself forcibly repeating the process simply to gather more money. And given players are required to amass $10,000 worth of earnings in order to participate in the final chapter/final race, it doesn’t take long for Desert Child to reveal itself — from out its admittedly pleasant, if not spectacular, vibrantly lo-fi pixel aesthetic — as nothing more than a needless grind of doing the exact same tasks over and over again.

There are of course helpful substitutes such as a bank to deposit your savings (out of fear the police may take it from you if you invest, and fail, in a little too many illegal activities) which accumulates interest overtime. Yet for every ounce of considerate design Desert Child initially appears to offer, comes a similarly occasional annoyance or flawed system that only damages what glimpse of goodwill the game generates. For example, with the very same bank: I can only deposit/withdrawal $10 at a time or all at once, but I can’t input the desired amount myself? Requiring me to (and I kid you not) mash the face button repeatedly in $10 steps. Add to this (the biggest insult to injury in what is a steadily-mounting number of insults) the fact you can’t simply retry a given mission upon completion then and there, instead having you flung back to the main hub of the Martian city, to walk all the way back to a desired mission and the game’s blatant lack of foresight pertaining to a player’s time becomes even more apparent.

As is, like so many survival entries, the presence of statistics like hunger and bike damage to keep a tab on — resulting in a large portion of your winnings/earnings spent bringing both stats back down to 0% over and over again, an obviously artificial lengthening of one’s time in the game. You could argue that while the former stat is relatively controlled at the game’s own discretion, the latter is down to one’s skill (or lack thereof) during missions. And there is a degree of truth to this detail — the fact that one’s ability to dodge obstacles and make use of your trustee bike’s thrusters is paramount if you want to keep the damage percentage as low as possible. Plus the ability to customize your bike with bought/stolen parts and energy cells, though brief, does at least offer some room for experimentation and versatility in your chosen set-up — making careful use of one’s grid space and prioritizing how large a buff said parts get in the process.

But as noted, whether it’s the AI itself that tends to run on a completely different rule-set to yourself or the frequent technical hiccups (playing on the Switch) when one too many explosions or visual effects clutter the screen, these small RPG-lite systems do little to circumvent the mediocre flair of most racing segments. Gameplay often resulting in something both hectic and chaotic, but not in a good way — players regularly running out of bullets to be left to the mercy of the game’s willingness to have the on-screen truck, that serves as your ammo replenisher, appear but in so inconsistent a pattern. Even the weapon of choice you pick from out of an arsenal in the beginning serves little replayability when the only difference is in their visuals and — aside from a brief borrowing of a chargeable laser gun which serves as a side mission in the game’s hub — remain relatively confined by the restrictive ammunition.

Closing Comments:

Though its pixellated visuals and bright environments do provide brief pleasantries in the first hour or so, the little variety in its missions and very reason to stay invested other than grinding until the climax results in a game caught between two minds, committing, sadly, to neither one in the process. Satisfying neither the shm’up crowd in it for some arcade-style scrolling, nor the adventure crowd intrigued by its bright, 80’s sci-fi environments complete with singular button-prompt interactions. Desert Child eagerly attempts to pay homage to these influences and while isn’t so indulgent it wanes on the delivery of the gameplay itself, sadly what offer of gameplay there is ends up both repetitive and eventually drab to the point of boredom. Helped little by the disappointing lack of explanation or context for many of its objectives. And even at such a brief run-time of around four to five hours, Desert Child still ends up taking far too long at delivering what is, in actuality, so very little.

Version Reviewed: Nintendo Switch