Dezatopia

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1

.

Review:

Dezatopia is a Shmup released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2020. This game makes use of multiple interesting and fairly unique gameplay mechanics to create a fairly unique experience within the Shmup genre, all wrapped in a retro-style presentation.

That retro-style presentation makes use of 2D pixel art visuals with an absolute ton of activity happening on-screen at any given time, with lots of color, though these visuals do suffer from some nasty slowdown (however, a part of me suspects this may be simulated?). These are paired with a chiptune soundtrack that reminds me a lot of the sort of music you’d find in Sega Genesis games.

The core gameplay mechanic in Dezatopia is that your ship has different weapons facing in all four directions, and these can be turned on and off with the tap of a button (though you can opt to change this so it only activates while you’re holding the button down). You’re not forced to choose between these weapons – you could have all four running at all times. However, the game discourages you from doing this by having each additional weapon in use at the same time slowing you down. Additionally, the first use of a weapon that you haven’t fired in the last few seconds will have an added burst of power, giving you even more incentive to try to cycle through your weapons rather than using all of them at all times.

This game also incorporates a shop upgrade system, but honestly it’s kinda’ a mess. At various times while you’re in the middle of combat, you’ll have a shop screen pop up, where you can fly in one of four directions to select purchases. However, it’s not immediately clear what all these icons are (you’re told in the game’s tutorial, but there are too many options to expect players to memorize them). Making things even worse is that these selections are superimposed over the current screen your ship is on, meaning that obstacles in the game will make it harder to make shop selections, or possibly even push you into making selections you may not want. Trying to take a moment to consider your options is discouraged too, as the shop will disappear after a few seconds.

You’ll want to upgrade your weapons, too, because your up-facing and left-facing weapons in particular are very weak from the start, with their unwieldy way of aiming through movement making it harder to consistently aim at any threats coming from those directions. And Dezatopia will be throwing a lot of threats at you – this is a pretty busy Shmup, with a relatively high challenge level.

Yet despite these complaints, I had a blast with this game’s interesting weapon types and unique four-direction mechanic. While Dezatopia is messy and definitely tries a few unique mechanics that don’t quite work out, it tries enough unique mechanics that do work that this results in a unique and quirky entry into the genre, and one that’s pretty fun despite its problems. If you’re a Shmup fan, this is definitely a game well worth checking out.

tl;dr – Dezatopia is a Shmup with a unique four-direction weapon mechanic that has players trying to balance out their use of the game’s weapons in some interesting ways, with a retro-style presentation that looks and sounds great (though goes a bit too heavy on the slowdown). The superimposed shop mechanic is somewhat less successful, but overall this is a fun and unique Smup, albeit a somewhat messy one, and fans of the genre should definitely give it a look.

Grade: B+

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