TSUNAMI

Humans can be pretty menacing and destructive, but nothing beats nature when it decides to go wild, even for a few hours. Earthquakes, tornadoes and volcanoes are just some of the tricks up its sleeve, and people are powerless when it comes to dealing with them. Tsunamis can be incredibly devastating as well, especially if they strike a heavily populated area.

TSUNAMI is a survival game with fast-paced gameplay mechanics that challenge you to escape certain death by running away from an incoming tsunami. In order to do so, you must navigate the narrow streets of a city and avoid all sorts of obstacles along the way. You must also move as quickly as possible, otherwise the wave catches up with you and it’s game over.

The first thing you notice about the game is how counterintuitive the controls are, mostly because the movement feels very imprecise. It’s also worth noting that the character cannot look up or down, only left and right, which is very disorienting when everyone is used to the classic first-person mechanics. However, you can learn to adapt if you persevere and you do not lack patience.

Some of the obstacles are in constant motion, which means that you have to time your steps right in order to avoid touching them. At the same time, you also have to keep moving forward to avoid the tsunami, so it can be very difficult to do all this at once. In fact, the difficulty level is kind of unfair, but mainly because it’s so annoying to look around and examine your surroundings, thanks to the clunky controls.

The graphics fail to impress as well, although they wouldn’t matter as much under ideal conditions. In this case, however, it’s far easier to notice the terrible level design and pixelated graphics, which does not help at all with the general atmosphere. The sound is nothing out of the ordinary either, and you can actually ignore it entirely without hurting the overall experience one bit.

Even if the idea itself is quite tantalizing and exciting in theory, TSUNAMI fails to keep you interested for more than a few minutes, mainly due to the awful controls and repetitive gameplay. On the other hand, these issues could be solved with a bit of work from the developer.