Bad-ass twin stick rogue-like implemented by seriously talented developers. Perfect in every way with extreme vibes from the PS3's Super Stardust HD and Star-ship Troopers. This magnificent twin-stick is played out on gorgeous looking spherical play-fields with a good progression system and 2 additional un-lockable characters.

Progression is character independent allowing for good longevity though the game's stages can get repetitive. Stages though remain challenging and hold your interest as you advance in ability. The game can be difficult but stick with it and as you invest into character, drone or weapon attributes you will be rewarded with new play-field dynamics as you progress.

A real Steam hidden gem.

****** Post-release addendum, mouse and keyboard play has actually gotten worse since launch. I'm having serious issues even playing the game using that input method because some on screen buttons just stop working and prompts are still displaying controller icons. ******


There’s always something about games where you traverse around a relatively tiny planetoid that catches my eye. Whether it’s Jettomero, Planetary Annihilation, or even going back to Spore, I’ve tried quite a few games with the basis of being able to circumnavigate a globe. Now Battle Planet – Judgement Day sets me up to do it with guns blazing.

Abbreviated Review: https://youtu.be/_oSgGDA-ioY

The first thing I noticed in Battle Planet is that the premise for the story is very similar to Dungeon of the Endless. Not that “crashing prison ship and subsequent escape” is very unusual, but I just thought it was interesting given my appreciation for that game (where’s the sequel already?).

Aside from that tiny fragment, there’s not a whole lot of story to be told. The narrative, in general, doesn’t even seem to have much going on aside from the fact that you are a criminal and police/bounty hunters along with the local fauna on each planet want you dead. That works for me though. Criminals want to be free and people generally don’t want that so that’s a conflict and now you have a story.

Battle Planet is a twin-stick shooter, but typically, when I’m playing such a game on PC I use a mouse and keyboard rather than a controller. That sort of negates the idea of it being “twin-stick”, but it does help define the type of gameplay. You move around with one set of inputs and aim to shoot with another set. I guess that defines nearly every shooter though, so I suppose I should add “top-down” to the mix.

In most games within this genre, the skill you’ll need to master is good mobility – and that is also the case for Battle Planet. Mobility is an important aspect of the game and as you make dodge all sorts of melee and projectile attacks. While you move, the camera will stay centered on you, but the planet will move underneath your feet. This makes for a fun perspective of you moving around with the horizon unveiling new terrain as you go.

Enemies will be spawning all around you, so it is often the case that you’ll need to find gaps to move through and around them. Sometimes it’s best just to shoot your way through, but most of the time you’ll be backpedaling like nearly every twin-stick shooter. The significant number of enemies, with their spam of firepower and the constant threat of melee, means you won’t last long without a good sense of where you’re going and how to get their fast.

Battle Planet’s progression design is that of a typical roguelite. You are most likely going to die your first run and many more after that. Throughout each of these runs, you’ll be collecting a resource that allows you to upgrade your skills, health, and weapons. This creates a system where you’re most likely going to be slightly more powerful each run, which is how I prefer my roguelites. People that like a more traditional “you just have to get better each time” design probably isn’t going to be a fan of the way this is set up.

Waves consist of one of a handful of scenarios that repeat quite often. These boil down to disarming bombs, defeating a set number of enemies, surviving for a specified time, or a boss fight. There are some variations on these, such as a survival wave called “solar flare” where half of the planet is being bombarded by deadly solar rays while you fight snipers on the safe half. These can be fun, but there aren’t all that many relative to the others. After a set number of normal ways, usually three to five, you start one of the boss fights.

The boss fights work as you would expect. Some big bad guy with a larger health bar fires extra deadly shots at you (or attacks in their particular way) and upon death gives you plenty of upgrade resources. These are usually the deadliest part of the game and, outside of a few, pull from a small pool of the bosses you’ve encountered. Two of the boss fights that are static (until you beat them) allow you to fight fellow escaped prisoners. Defeating them unlocks them for you to play within the game.

The two characters you unlock fall into the stereotypical role of “agile with low heath” and “slow with high health”. The starting character falls right in between there with more average stats. They all feel reasonable to play, but the slow character has wields a rocket launcher that can be frustrating to use. It fires slowly and a miss can be painful, but its splash damage can make short work of your enemies when they start swarming the screen.

Each of the characters has one individual upgrade screen that benefits their health, base weapon damage, and skills. For me, it felt like with how long it could potentially take to upgrade skills, it was more beneficial to pick one person and stick with their upgrades. The two other upgrade pages for weapon pickups and activated abilities are useful, but hard to justify upgrading. Weapon pickups were inconsistent and often felt weak relative to your main weapon. Upgrading did make some moderately useful, but others still left you more vulnerable.

Blasting your way around these tiny planets deactivating bombs and killing enemies was a joy… for a while. The handful of planets biomes were fun to see, but the lack of variety of enemies quickly loses its luster. Especially as you restart and see the early enemy types dozens of times. Battle Planet started to wear as thin as many twin-stick shooters despite its novelties.

The game, overall, feels a little sloppy in its execution. When playing with a mouse and keyboard, all of the button prompts are still for an Xbox controller. That can be a bit disorienting even after you get used to it. After so many runs, I also felt like the score screen between waves, the store planet after each planet, and going back through early waves made the game repetitious. I suppose that’s not too surprising though since you are stuck using the same mechanics on the same enemies over and over.

I think if you could beat Battle Planet in three or four hours (which you potentially could) it wouldn’t get old, but as it stands, it doesn’t have the gameplay variety to hold up much longer. Maybe as a game you revisit every so often in your free time for a run or two, it would have a lasting appeal. In general, though, Battle Planet isn’t a game I’d want to sit down and play all the way through. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s bad, but it could use some work before I’d recommend getting it without a significant discount. The game needs the same sort of effort to polish the cool visuals invested in making the gameplay have a lasting appeal.

If you'd like to see more of my reviews, check out my curator page here: Endyo Gaming and online at BagoGames

REVIEW - Battle Planet - Judgement Day, or:
'My babies will see to you, long after I'm gone!'

GAMEPLAY:
Let's be honest, this game is only something for people that love the thrill. Fast-paced combat with a strong difficulty make this a great experience for everyone who likes to prove their reaction time and run for the highscore.
This game is a lot of fun. You constantly get pushed and rewarded and actually feel more powerful in your next run.

Battle Planet offers 2 systems for upgrading your character:

Perks:
- perks for your current game stay until you die and bring in a lot of gameplay variety by influencing some of the game systems, like for example your little helper drone, which you can upgrade to shoot alongside you

Perma-Upgrades:
- seem to stick to your character and upgrade the general statistics of weapons, items, the space criminal you're playing and your helper drone

Aside of that you pick up weapons and items on the way:
- items stick to your character and reload over time
- weapons are a one time usable and seem to have a wide range of variety

Enemies:
- I didn't manage to get to the end of the game, but I feel that especially for the beginning/first planets some of the enemies get somewhat repetitive. Never to the point that I felt bored, but I'd love to see an update/Addon to this game!
- Bosses feel great. Especially beating them and being able to breathe again! More pls

GRAPHICS:
Readable and very distinguishable art style that even assures a clear visibility of all game elements when ♥♥♥♥ hits the fan and you're being shot at by what feels like a hundred enemies with 1000 projectiles.
Character design is badass, alas somewhat seen already. They seem to have put a lot of effort into it and it definitely displays the main characters rogue attitude very well.

STORY:
You're one of 3 escaped prisoners. You start with the raider and unlock the other 2 by fighting agains them as bosses.
There doesn't seem to be a big background story to them or the world araound them, but especially for this kind of game I don't need it as the main motivation is defined by the competetive nature and trying to get higher in the highscore.

AUDIO:
Audio is great. Explosions feel heavy and every shot is crisp and instant.
Music merges very well with the increasing activity on the small planets.
There was one very funny audio bug, where one of the bosses audio (giant spider (#spoilers)) was extremely loud, but I believe something this obvious will be fixed quite soon.

RATING/CONCLUSION:
Overall I had a great time so far with the game (currently no.13 on the worldwide leaderboard, so come beat me!)
The gameplay feels excellent and responsive. It's a game that seems to have a lot to offer with it's permanent upgrades and I can see myself playing it in between sessions of more narrative games to just get into that quick and light fun and accidentaly not putting the controller away for 3 hours in the end.
That said; I believe with a little bit more time/money the devs can bring more interesting content to the game as some of the early planets feel kind of 'samey' and the enemy and weapon variety surely can be increased.

8.5/10

It's hard for me to give this a Thumb's Down because even though it is fairly tight and competently made, it is ultimately a boring game with a very flat experience overall.

You start with a heavily-neutered set of powers and skills and as you proceed through the arenas (little planets), you gather chips which you may use for permanent upgrades. Every upgrade is MORE SOMETHING. So your basic gun sucks, and then you grind away to get upgrades to it's damage. Your jetpack sucks, and you grind away to get speed/fuel upgrades. Your speed is slow, and you grind to get speed upgrades. The core game does not have enough depth to keep a player interested enough to keep doing this and make it feel worthwhile. You're basically repeating the same dull arenas over and again with very little to keep you interested.

There are different weapons which randomly drop which are ostensibly there to help you tear through foes faster... but like other upgrade aspects of this game, those weapons are heavily-neutered to the point that your pop-gun is stronger so you have to grind to upgrade them to make them worthwhile. Even with all the weapons upgraded to MAX there's little difference in what any of them do... just different shooty graphics but really no mechanical differences. I honestly favored the basic pop-gun most of the time because picking up other weapons doesn't really seem to make much difference, and there's little risk/reward to gathering them when they drop.

Grind, grind, grind, grind for upgrades when the basic game just isn't all that fun. You could never in a million years beat this game on your first run, so it becomes an exercise in complete tedium. And with "upgrades" that don't feel meaningful and don't change the game mechanics in any way, it quickly becomes apparent how little depth there is here.

The other issue is unavoidable damage and loss of player control. There are times when you get forced into a lava pool which shoots you up in the air and back out. During this animation you lose the ability to control the player avatar and you can't use your jetpack to get you to safety, so you often end up being launched back into a pile of foes who then push you back into the lava. Which shoots you back up with no avatar control, lather rinse repeat. After a 15 minute run where you die this way, it makes you want to tear your hair out.

I guess you could get this on 80% sale or deeper discount if you really have to try it. But I feel like the mechanics of this game are so weak there's really no fun to be had. I'm giving up after my last fully-upgraded run ended with an unavoidable lava death. It is not worth it... there's so little here in terms of gameplay. Lots of window dressing, graphics, and animations to cover up a fundamentally boring game.

One of these cases where I wish STEAM would have a sideways thumb or a 'MEH' option.
This game is fun for a while and is obviously a hommage to the excellent Super Stardust HD, with it's rotating spherical playfield. Unfortunately it ultimately falls flat compared to SS-HD. The game has okay graphics, fairly colorful and it never crashed during play. So thats a plus.
Gameplay however gets VERY REPETITIVE, VERY QUICK. You drop onto a planet and then there is 4 stages where you have to either defuse bombs [stand next to a thing for couple of seconds] or kill everything/ survive 30 seconds, and eventually face off against a boss and move on to a Shop Planet to invest dropped money into permanent but very boring upgrades. You also get to choose a perk upon completion of each planet. Typical 'Rogue Lite' fare.
Suffers from most of the 'procedural generation ailments' you find in other games. Grindy nature, occasionally stupid placement of gameplay stuff like the bombs and that annoying repetition. There is planets which have 3 stages of bomb defusal in a row. Where SS-HD was a very fluid romp due to the endless nature of a spherical playfield. This game opts for barrires like rocks and lava pits which make fast movement a chore and comes with the obligatory collision issues. Rocks can be traveresed with the occasional jump pad [annoying] and pits can be jetpacked over. To fit the cool 3D rocks and pertrusions from the sphere, the playfield is actually very confined and there is tons of wasted screen estate at both sides. Enemies drop weapon pickups occassionally, which one rather avoids as they are, more often than not, less useful than the standard gun.

Final verdict: Wish they woulda stuck CLOSER to the Super Stardust HD formula, instead of throwing all the worn out random generation, rogue lite stuff into the game. Random enemy respawn doesn't have any rhyme or reason, compared to the predictable nature of blasting Asteroids that Stardust relied upon and which made it so much fun.
It's probably okay on a sale, but then one might feel that they alreaady seen all of this in somewhat better games.
So yeah..it's a 'MEH'. Been there, done that.

The game is a pure adrenalin rush and feels like an explosion opera! It's fun to dodge the million bullets and enemies and combine attacks with the jetpack and special abilities. The difficulty is quite steep, but it's therefore super satisfying to make progress. Awesome title!

Gets boring pretty fast.
The game is very much carried by the visuals.

I only ever made it to the 3rd boss and the game was only really fun for the first 2-3 runs, after that it feels very "samey". The "rougelite" perk selection is very generic and most of them you hardly notice any difference. There is virtually no learning process at all and every run feels very much like the same thing from start to finish only with gradually increased difficulty and more instances of unavoidable damage

Also, the permanent upgrades that carry over between runs feel very much like a mandatory grind in order to progress rather than a nice helpful bonus. I can't imagine it would be possible to complete a fresh save file run of this game just because of how mandatory the mobility, health, and damage upgrades are in order to survive. Which should not be the case in a rougelite IMO, the barrier to completing a run should be knowledge/skill, not grinding.

Its a well made game, but there just isn't nearly enough variety in between "runs" in order to keep the game interesting or justify the 1 life rougelite design.

If you like classic arcade score attack games you might enjoy this, but at that point I would just recommend "Geometry wars 3" as a much better alternative to this game (purely for gameplay not aesthetic). If you're looking for a rougelite for the rougelite elements, I would suggest any of the games they listed as being inspired by in the "about this game" section of the store page.

Battle planet is a super fun fast paced twin stick shooter played out over small spherical worlds. As you fight different (and enjoyable) waves of creatures and challenges you obtain currency to purchase permanent upgrades. One of the best score chasing games I have played in a while with really great, high quality presentation.

Highly recommended!

I love everything about Battle Planet - Judgement Day. The gameplay, premise, and visual aesthetics are all superb. The permanent progression allows unspent upgrade chips to carry over to subsequent runs, while weapons, along with item upgrades can be shared by all characters. Meaning you only have to use your points on those two categories once. This allows you to focus on upgrading character specific traits between runs, or at upgrade posts after missions. The gameplay loop is based on being fair to the player, which makes it hard to stop playing.

Battle Planet feels fast, frenetic, and fun!! Controlling each avatar feels unique, and the overall feel of the game is buttery smooth. No complaints here, just a great game. Cheers to the development team.

I love the super fast pace. Simple yet deep combat. solid upgrades. Fantastic presentation. Awesome game. GGWP!