"
Geometry Survivor" combines the gameplay from the popular GamePass hit "
Vampire Survivors" with the visuals from the Xbox 360 cult classic "
Geometry Wars", developed and published by "Brain Seal".
For those unfamiliar with "Vampire Survivors", the gameplay basically has you move a ship in this case which automatically attacks in an arena with oncoming enemies. Enemies spawn constantly and new types of enemies have more difficult patterns to deal with. Many of the defeated enemies drop blue points and yellow credit tokens. The blue points are the XP which you can use to "level up" your ship for the current run. Level ups pause the game and you get to choose 1 of 3 random upgrades like new weapons, abilities or improvements to the ones you already have. Goal is to quickly improve your ship and survivor for 20 minutes during a run, which sounds easy but becomes a challenge due to the large amount and unpredictable movement of the enemies. You're run ends if you lose all your hearts which can happen fairly quickly. With the unlocked credits you can buy new ships and permanent buffs like "starting a run with an additional heart" and nerfs like "increasing the enemies' speed". The strategy is to find out for yourself which weapons/upgrades are the most efficient ones to make it through the 20 minutes. Some weapons are very powerful but have a long cooldown while others are quick but only deal damage to a few enemies, finding the right balance is the key. It's a basic game concept improved by the randomness of the weapons you get to choose with each level up. The 20 achievements in the game unlock for each minute you survive, which took me around 1.5 hours to get, so depending on your skill this is a quick completion.
Personally I like the simple visual style. They aren't original as they strongly emulate the "Geometry Wars" style, but it's effective as it makes the frantic gameplay easy to follow. You'll see bright colored geometries on a black background. Enemies explode with a ton of particles. I turned screen shake of, move the camera far and reduced the blur to improve the visibility. Also I turned the music volume down.
In summary "Geometry Survivor" isn't very original, but the basic gameplay that makes "Vampire Survivors" fun also works well here with the visuals of "Geometry Wars". I think the original price of $9.99 is a bit too high, considered that you can get both Vampire Survivors and Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved each for $5 and those are objectively better games.
3.0