After a few seconds of playing Curved Space, I widened my field of view, uncomfortable with how close the camera was to the spaceship in comparison to how large the playable space felt. One map looks like a space station cosplaying as a donut, offering ramps to slide onto its underbelly.įorewarning: if you are prone to motion sickness, consider adjusting the camera settings before hopping into gameplay. Escher-like loop that drunkenly curves in on itself. Players can float around inside the hole or on top of the floating rock or simply move to the underside of the asteroid. One map features an asteroid with a massive hole in its center with a piece of rock jutting up from the hole.
Players pilot a small spaceship and move it around various three dimensional maps that all have curved surfaces. So Curved Space isn’t really a twin-stick shooter?Ĭurved Space is chaotic and built to be somewhat disorienting. Players need to hold down or press the R2 trigger to shoot a weapon and pointing their ship in a direction with the camera will indicate where the a beam or bullet will fire. But one of the sticks moves you along its curved, gravity-defying maps while the other moves the camera around. It was a strange, disappointing contrast.Ĭurved Space is marketed as a twin-stick shooter, along the likes of beloved games like Geometry Wars or Super Stardust HD. But I felt a little bored, like I was going through the motions. At the same time a track from Scandroid or 3FORCE or Fury Weekend was playing, the music darting around in my ears to a furious, energetic beat. Maybe it was “Kill 3 Radiant Spiders” or “Drain the Energy Conduits” or “Survive!” I can’t really remember. Obviously Curved Space would be the same right?ĭuring one of the later campaign missions of Curved Space, I was repeating an objective I had done in nearly every previous mission before it. It’s a hell of a way to get a person pumped for an action game. I attribute Hotline Miami‘s thrashing lawnmower of violence and action for getting me into the obviously 80s inspired music.
I noticed the ability to look at the game’s soundtrack–stuffed with synthwave tracks (a favorite genre of mine)–and listen to it in its entirety. There’s a strange disconnect amongst Curved Space‘s many parts.īefore starting up the game I decided to peruse the options menu as I tend to do, looking for subtitle settings and making sure the sound is turned up.