Destropolis

Genre: 2-Stick Shooter / Roguelike

Players: 1-3 Co-Op (Local), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Destropolis is a 2-Stick Shooter with Roguelike elements released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2020 and ported to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in 2022. This game has players taking the role of an octahedron blasting away various red geometric shapes in a monochrome city.

The visuals in this game are simple, yet striking, with everything rendered in 3D geometric shapes. Players are blue, green, and yellow, enemies are red, and everything else is white. However, what each of these shapes lacks in detail, they make up for in sheer quantity and destructibility, with hundreds of enemies and “buildings” onscreen at any given time, each able to be broken apart by your attacks. Despite the massive number of moving objects onscreen, the only slowdown appears to be stylized effects. This is all backed by an energetic soundtrack that does a good job highlighting the action of this game.

Surprisingly, despite this actually being a pretty decent-looking game, it only takes up a measly 168MB of space in your Nintendo Switch’s memory. It’s hard to think of many other games where you get more out of such a small amount of space.

The gameplay itself is extremely simple, but surprisingly compelling. Enemies keep appearing, in increasingly larger numbers and in larger and more dangerous forms, and you need to survive while taking them out for as long as you can. Killing enemies earns points that can be used to level up your character and gain bonus abilities like improved damage, better health and shields, more frequent bonus weapon drops, and so forth. These upgrades are randomized in a way that ensures that no two runs will be exactly alike.

I should note that this game’s action focus and its simple gameplay makes it a solid choice for co-op play. While support for only three players is a bit odd, and the lack of any online features (save for a leaderboard) is disappointing, this is still a solid choice for couch co-op play.

There are really only two major complaints I have with this game. First, players must contend with overheating weapons that suddenly stop working in the midst of battle, which is super frustrating. Some of the Roguelike upgrades mitigate this issue, but don’t eliminate it entirely. And secondly, there’s not much in the way of options or variety in this game – after just a few minutes of playing this game, you know exactly what to expect from the rest of the game, save for new enemies and upgrades if you survive long enough.

Still, for a $6 game, Destropolis is a lot of fun packed into a small package. It may be a tad repetitive and have a few elements that could do with improvement, but for a simple, action-packed Two-Stick Shooter with solid co-op, this is an excellent choice.

tl;dr – Destropolis is a Two-Stick Shooter with Roguelike elements where players try to survive for as long as they can while blasting away red geometric shapes. The game is simple and a tad repetitive, and the weapon overheating can be frustrating, but this is still a lot of fun packed into a small package, and players looking for an inexpensive, compelling 2-Stick Shooter with good co-op should find this to be a delightful distraction that keeps pulling them back for just one more run.

Grade: B+

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