The Impact Factor

Retrieval Mission

Review

Xeodrifter, Renegade Kid (PS Vita)

Abstract: Xeodrifter is about retrieval, both mechanically and narratively. Renegade Kid’s 2014 action-adventure game takes the ideas established by games like Super Metroid and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and implements them to great effect in Xeodrifter. For brief moments, I felt the same thrill I experienced when I first played those seminal, genre-defining games. At others, the game’s limited scope reminded me I was playing a title with a different ambition than it’s forefathers. The game is fun, functional and well made but doesn’t have much of its own voice.

Xeodrifter’s premise is simple enough. You play as an astronaut who, after a collision with an asteroid, finds his ship critically damaged and unable to continue lightspeed travel. The astronaut is then subsequently stranded in a small solar system of four planets, tasked with traveling down to each in search of the components to repair his derelict vessel. On each planet you find challenges—small monsters, traps and difficult areas to traverse. As you progress through your short time with the game, you will find yourself frequently hopping between planets as you become better able to explore them. By the end of your adventure the astronaut barely resembles his starting self. You have the ability to jetpack upwards, run at phenomenal speed, transform into a submarine, and more.

Submarine exploration is just the start of your journey.

It’s clear to me that Xeodrifter was made with longtime genre fans in mind. Everything has a place. The game felt immediately familiar, like returning home. Xeodrifter knows its pedigree and acknowledges the kind of people likely to play it. That manifests itself in a couple ways. First and foremost, Xeodrifter is not a game that’s going to hold your hand. You’re not told which of the game’s four planets to start on, that’s something you discover when you realize you can’t make progress in all but one. And even after that, it’s up to you know find where and how to use your new exploration abilities. Xeodrifter also has an exceedingly punishing first hour or so. You start the game with an extremely limited health pool. A couple hits and you’re dead. There’s no checkpoint system mid level either. You die and you’re sent back to the start of the world. I wouldn’t call Xeodrifter a difficult game, but it is certainly one that will make you pay for your mistakes. As a fan of 2D action-adventure games, and metroidvanias, it felt perfect.

Try not to get hit. Dying, at least at first, comes pretty often.

Xeodrifter’s 2D gameplay is kept simple. You run, jump and shoot. The former two aren’t done exceedingly well at first, though. As a metroidvania, a key aspect of your progression relies on unlocking new abilities that both open up new avenues of exploration and make your character feel more powerful. How do you gain these new abilities? Boss fights. Bosses test your understand of the game’s mechanics, as well as the use of all previously acquired power ups. Fights like these are often a high point in other metroidvania titles. That’s unfortunately not the case here. Every boss shares the same model, only with different colors. Though each fight proceeds a little differently (each new boss will have one or two new moves), they all play very similarly. It’s monotonous and the game’s biggest misstep. It would have been so nice if the repetition of visiting the same worlds several times over was in-part ameliorated by exciting boss fights.

Wait, you again?!

Like I said earlier, Xeodrifter is all about retrieval. Renegade Kid has retrieved the bare bone essentials from Super Metroid and repurposed them for the game. It felt as if the developers had a checklist of everything a metroidvania game needed to feel complete. They made sure to check all the boxes but, unfortunately, Xeodrifter doesn’t have much beyond that. Much of the criticism levied against Xeodrifter when it first released was that the game was ‘too short.’ Time to completion is never something that affects my review of a game, period. But there is a nugget of insight in that complaint. Xeodrifter is fun, functional, and well-executed. It also feels like it could have been more. The game is content to be a charming throwback to some of your favorite games, rather than try to strike out on it’s own and become a new classic. Xeodrifter felt like an appetizer to a more complete experience.

Straight out of Super Metroid. Not that that's a bad thing.

Renegade Kid can sure nail visuals, though. The game looks and sounds fantastic. Xeodrifter is a perfect fusion of 8- and 16-bit graphics. The end result is a game that would be at home among its NES/SNES inspirations. One of the most striking aspects of the game’s presentation is what the developers have adapted from their previous title, Mutant Mudds. A power up you unlock mid-game allows the player to hop between the foreground and background to traverse past obstacles. The way in which Renegade Kid pulls off this effect needs to be commended. The fidelity of the miniature background combined with the focus blur on the foreground that happens seamlessly between hops is remarkable. You could tell this was the developer’s signature. It never stopped being fun.

Background-foreground hopping was my favorite thing to do in Xeodrifter.

Xeodrifter filled a perfect niche in my game time. I was looking for a tightly designed, compact experience with solid mechanics and a competent foundation. All of that is true about Xeodrifter. The game felt at times like it lacked ambition, however, which was clear in the repetitive gameplay and uninspired boss fights. Still, I was happy with the time I spent with the game and would recommend it to anyone looking for a quick metroidvania fix. You’ll retrieve what you need from it.

Xeodrifter
3/5