Soft explorer

Let me preface this review by saying this: I am not a fanboy of this company...I've never even heard of it before. I have never seen this game before nor ever knew of its development. That said... This is a VERY clever game...especially for the money. The graphics are not incredible but the game ran very smoothly on my Macbook 2GHz with 2GB RAM and looked pretty for the most part. The super jump ability and some weapons do have a well made distortion effect that radiates out from where you land or where the blast lands. There are some other interesting effects like motion blurs as well. There is a ton of strategy involved in killing most of the insect enemies. Some of them you can 'run and gun' but many of them require you to retreat and fire at them as they will often unleash a fury of fire on you and if you sit still and try and blast them away, they'll likely kill you well before you kill them. The smaller crab-like enemies often have a sort of hive-like mentality...that is to say they travel in large groups and once they see you they will chase you, but with the right weapon you can take them all out at once. Another enemy were these 'tree stumps with legs' as I call them...as you approach them...they approach you...but when you stop...so do they. I never really figured out how to kill them so I dashed through that area. Often some insects will pop up right out of the ground as you approach an uninfested area...taking you by surprise and forcing a last second weapon selection to take them out. The weapons in the game are very well thought out too. One of them not only serves an offensive purpose but a defensive one as well. Another even helps increase the landmass rather than most of them that decrease the landmass. This weapon's usefulness will be made pretty obvious in the demo when you get it. Another weapon will heavily decrease the landmass to the point where the water/lava/acid underneath now appears. The acid/lava in particular are good for killing some insects...but you have to devise a strategy to lure them in there without killing yourself. Very clever. The player's special abilities are also well thought out...allowing you to dash through areas that are heavily infested with insects (as mentioned above) where you may not have a lot of life left to fight through them. Of course the penalty with that is that your score will not be as high as if you took out the insects. Super jump also can get you out of tight spots...or into them depending on how high and how far you jump. The upgrades for these abilities can be a godsend or a curse depending on the situation...so you have to be careful how you use them. All said, the graphics are simple, yet elegant and can pleasantly surprise you at times. The gameplay is very addicting...but the levels are very short and the maps themselves are small. The game never hiccuped once or slowed down...but there are a lot of options for turning the graphics down should it not run as smoothly on your machine. Honestly, if I had $10...I'd buy this game. If the content updates and new epsiodes are as fun as what was shown in the demo, this game will be very hard to walk away from.