The Superfluous Demo

The best way to keep gamers engaged over long periods of time is to provide them with an ever-changing world, as well as a great set of gameplay mechanics that allows them to reach the same result in multiple ways. Granted, most of the time that forces small developers to abandon looks in favor of functionality, because it’s tough for indie producers to come up with something like Skyrim or The Witcher 3.

The Superfluous is a 2D roguelike platformer in which you get to choose from a cast of interesting characters and use them to complete a variety of dangerous missions. As you might expect, the game features elements like permadeath, randomly generated levels and destructible terrain, which allows you to keep playing for as much as you want without getting bored in the process.

In essence, you start by choosing one of the available characters, each one of which has certain skills and abilities that are better suited for specific missions. Speaking of which, the missions you undertake are quite diverse, but don’t expect anything too complex either. On the other hand, they take place in different biomes, so at least you get to tackle new obstacles and different enemies.

Your character can carry multiple weapons and a few other gadgets, not to mention the fact that you can upgrade skills between each mission. Some of the progress is saved between missions, at least if you do not die, but you can choose to risk everything in order to search for more loot and gain more experience. It’s always a tantalizing option, which makes the gameplay quite addictive and entertaining.

As for the technical side of things, it must be mentioned that the game is still in a pretty rough state at the moment, although most elements are more or less functional. The pixel graphics are not extraordinary, but they seem to be nice enough, at least if you could see anything most of the time. In fact, the perpetual darkness makes exploration a bit difficult as well, not to mention the fact that the enemies require many bullets to be put down, and your character is very slow.

In the end, The Superfluous has the potential to achieve a lot more if the developer’s efforts are concentrated in the right direction. As such, the environments need better lightning, the enemies are too quick and bulletproof at the moment, and your characters move slowly when the jetpack is active, which is not ideal for a platformer with permadeath. You can support the developers by contributing to their Kickstarter campaign.