Astro Tripper is a furious shoot-em-up experience inspired by the painful, knuckle busting video games of years gone by. An evolution of PomPom's 2001 award winning game, Space Tripper. Travel the surface of large horizontally-scrolling platforms, and pit your highly maneuverable craft against hoards of enemies eager to blow you to bits, eat you or worse.
First off: have a controller for this game. The controls themselves are not obviously explained, and even skimming the 'how to play' section didn't elucidate it any further. But at least the XBox controller mappings are a little easier to guess than the keyboard controls.
My low score is for a lack of polish, rather than a fundamental problem with the gamplay itself; it seems reasonably well thought out and the controls (once I worked them out) responded smoothly and predictably, allowing me to make accurate shots and dodge enemies.
But for that, it's fairly soulless. It's an arcade game that doesn't really draw me. It's made a lot of the same decisions in presentation as other games in this kind of genre - Really Big Sky did it amazingly.
That game drew me back again and again to beat my scores. I doubt Astro Tripper will do the same, after I've truly got the hang of it's intricacies.
A little bit more polish would bump this up to a 6/10, I think, but it'd have to pull something real special to get higher. Worth it as part of a bundle, but I wouldn't buy on it's own with RBS out there.
Astro Tripper is the ideal game for those who want to have wrist pain. With only easy, hard, and very hard difficulties, the game doesn't provide a middle ground for players in the skill spectrum. With that said, the game is quite difficult due to the outdated life system. I doubt I will ever play this game again.
✓
Generic and technically flawed twitch shooter that has the irritating gimmick of confining the player to a small and oddly shaped space. It's underwhelming in all ways, and a shoddy console port to boot. If this game was a piece of classical music, it would be performed in the tempo of garbaggio. Avoid like the plague. Avoid like a loan shark. Avoid like a psycho ex-girlfriend. Pretend you never saw it and buy Jamestown instead.
I've tried the three shoot'em ups of PomPom Games on PC and the three are equally good (I've only a small preference for Astro Tripper). All have very good controls with a short time of adaptation. All have a similar design, you'll like it or not, it's pretty strange ! They aren't easy but I'm not quite qualified to say this because I'm not good at shoot'em ups.
The configuration make it easy to use any gamepad (a very good point because I have no intention to buy a Xbox controller).
Astro Tripper is original because there is no scrolling and you play in a close area but it's not a Geometry Wars clone, it's more like a classic shoot'em up. The second weapon gives two lateral attacks which are very pleasant to use when raiding in the ennemy forces.
I've only encountered one small problem : the bullets are disappearing when you put them out of screen by your moves.
In conclusion, I'd say that my discovery of PomPom games is a pleasant surprise, I will follow the future creations of this developer.
Like Alien Zombie Megadeath, keyboard controls are okay but Astro Tripper works best with a xBox controller. The game itself is a fast-paced spaceship game with a top down view with difficult combat. Despite the retro looking baddies and spaceships, Astro Tripper is NOT easy, at all. When I first loaded it up I was very frustrated. Running into enemy projectiles and the enemies themselves results in an instant death. This combined with quick enemy spawning and a short time limit can really ruin your day if you aren't careful.
Astro Tripper does offer a somewhat unique combat experience however. Your spaceship can flip directions to increase speed and range in baddies. There are also two different weapon systems; one shoots forward, one shoots vertically. These can be upgraded by picking up the powerups dropped by enemies. Levels are also not only very pretty, but also have varying heights.
In conclusion, Astro Tripper is very hard and can be fun but for those of you looking for depth, Astro Tripper isn't the right game for you. But for the price and intense combat, I give Astro Tripper 65/100.
Not too bad of a game, pretty fun and all around easy to learn.
Can be difficult on some levels, though. Good deal through the IndieRoyal!
Great game, very challenging.
Terrible controls make this game unplayable
★✩✩✩✩