Catastronauts

Genre: Arcade

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local)

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Review:

Catastronauts (sometimes written as “Catastronauts!”), is a family-friendly multiplayer co-op focused Arcade-style game released on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One in 2018, and ported to Nintendo Switch in 2019. In this game, players take the roles of the crew of a spaceship in the midst of a battle with an enemy ship. Players must balance the task of firing the ship’s guns with the tasks of repairing the ship’s battle damage and dealing with other circumstances that arise.

Despite the spacey theme, the game that Catastronauts most closely resembles is Overcooked. This game has the same sort of frenetic energy of scrambling around trying to juggle multiple tasks, all using extremely simple controls used in a context-sensitive manner. This game also does a great job of introducing new elements gradually as the game progresses, keeping things interesting and varied.

The presentation is also very much in line with Overcooked, featuring cartoony-looking 3D characters and environments backed by a light cinematic soundtrack with a lighthearted sense of humor, with character voices represented by nearly-incoherent mumbling, and with the villain making silly criticisms about how human your crew is, unlike his clearly-superior alien crew.

Speaking of criticisms, I do have a few, and since this game is so similar to Overcooked, it’s hard not to look at that series as a basis for comparison. Firstly, while Catastronauts does have varied mechanics it gradually introduces, the variety isn’t so great that you’ll find the conditions you’re playing in completely changing from one level to the next as they do in Overcooked. Also, the lack of online is disappointing. What’s more, on the other side of the multiplayer spectrum, this game doesn’t work nearly as well in single-player, with the game loaning players another character to swap between and manage, something that feels less like a difficulty adjustment and more like one more element to manage.

Still, while Catastronauts definitely has areas where it could do with some improvement, overall this is an excellent family-friendly multiplayer co-op focused game, easy to pick up and play, and something that any fan of Overcooked should definitely want to try.

tl;dr – Catastronauts is a family-friendly multiplayer co-op focused Arcade-style game where players scramble around a spaceship in the midst of a battle with an enemy ship, managing multiple tasks. In short, this game plays kinda’ like Overcooked meets Star Trek, with simple but enjoyable gameplay that makes for an excellent co-op experience. Its single-player is a bit lacking, there’s no online, and the stage variety has nothing on Overcooked, but otherwise this is a great game in that same style, and anyone who enjoys that franchise should definitely give this a try.

Grade: B+

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