Solaroids: Prologue Demo

Although shoot ‘em ups are not as common or as popular as they used to be back in the day, there are still plenty of fans out there that demand more games. Naturally, it’s not as easy as it looks to develop a proper shmup, given the fact that there are so many elements to consider. Hence, the controls are important, and so are the mechanics that govern the enemies and your ship.

Solaroids: Prologue is a 2D space shooter with fast-paced mechanics and a refined co-op mode, in which the goal is to survive for as long as possible in order to reach the final levels and amass as many points as you can. The game is designed to be pretty challenging, on the other hand, especially since there is an inertia system in place that forces you to pay attention to how you move your ship around the map.

As mentioned before, Solaroids: Prologue comes with local co-op support, which means that up to four people can share the same screen if you have enough gamepads laying around. However, the single player mode is just as fun, especially if you enjoy hunting power-ups, defeating enemies and coming face-to-face with huge bosses that require a bit of strategy to be defeated.

The inertia system has you constantly making small adjustments to keep the desired trajectory, and you can use both the front and the back thrusters to accelerate or brake. It can be rather difficult to make precise movements in the beginning, but it’s very rewarding to get better and better at it after a bit of practice. The power-ups make you stronger later on in the game as well.

Speaking of later levels, the bosses feature multiple destructible parts, which is always cool to see in a shoot ‘em up. Thus, you usually have to employ some sort of strategy in order to bring them down. On top of that, there’s a world leaderboard that allows you to compare scores with players from all over the world, so you can continue playing even after finishing the main campaign.

In the end, Solaroids: Prologue has everything a hardcore shoot ‘em up fan could want in order to keep themselves busy for many hours. The controls are snappy, the graphics are nice, and there are enough levels to have fun with for days.