Space Junk Seekers

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1

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Review:

Space Junk Seekers, released on Nintendo Switch in 2023, is an Arcade-style game where players control a spacecraft collecting derelict junk floating in space while evading drones that are pursuing you.

The presentation here is pretty decent, especially considering this game’s tiny 66MB file size. Visuals are presented with a 2D pixel art style (with a lot of pink), with some decent synthesized music backing it up. My biggest complaint here is that enemies that you need to avoid look too similar to the junk you need to collect, leading to unintended collisions. The only clear thing to differentiate them is that enemies are usually darker in color, but this isn’t helpful when there’s a gazillion pieces of junk and enemies on-screen and you need to be able to tell them apart at a glance.

In terms of gameplay, I think the real problem here is how repetitive, shallow, and aimless all of this is. You’re collecting junk, which can either be used as ammunition to fire at enemies or banked to get upgrades between runs. The thing is, it’s never quite clear what your ultimate goal is here. Upgrades you purchase aren’t permanent, so it’s not like you’re trying to build up your craft to be increasingly stronger, and enemies are only a threat because they gradually increase in number and swarm you, so there doesn’t seem much point to shooting them until there are so many enemies that shooting them seems like all it’s accomplishing is wasting your collected junk. The game highlights how long your current run is, but you’re not told to aim for any specific time so… what even is the point here?

You’re just going around, collecting scrap, avoiding enemies, collecting more scrap, shooting an enemy or two, wondering if you should have even bothered shooting them, collecting more scrap, getting overwhelmed by large numbers of enemies, getting hit, then going back to your ship to get more temporary upgrades to start anew. There’s a combo system, which is evidently tied to the timing of your button presses, but you can just button-mash to get the combo to keep building up, and it’s not exactly clear what these combos accomplish anyway.

There is a story here, about a humanoid alien, his holographic human companion, and a mystery what happened to Earth to leave all this junk laying around. And these characters are reasonably likeable and have a good dynamic with each other. But the gameplay is just so lacking in anything compelling that it’s hard for me to stay invested here.

I feel like there’s enough potential here to make for a solid core Arcade-style premise, but as-is this game just does not build on that premise, leaving it a pretty dull, monotonous, repetitive, pointless experience. As such, I cannot recommend Space Junk Seekers. Spend your money on something more fleshed-out instead.

tl;dr – Space Junk Seekers is an Arcade-style game where players collect derelict junk floating in space while avoiding drones. It’s a decent premise, but the gameplay is monotonous and pointless, leaving the game far too shallow and dull. Don’t bother with this one.

Grade: D+

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