What is it?
Nova Drift is a single screen shoot ’em up, or bullet hell shooter, or twin stick shooter, or modern take on the old arcade classic Asteroids. What’s modern about it, except for the graphics, is the roguelite part, which means you get to upgrade your ship in various ways. You have a choice of weapons, shields and ship bodies, and lots of different upgrades, and using and choosing among these provide variety to the gameplay, and so do a bunch of different game modes. The gameplay, at its core, is quite basic: you control a spaceship and shoot other spaceships on a wraparound screen (meaning objects moving off of one side of the screen reappear on the other side).
Is it player-friendly?
The gameplay is quite simple with the player only moving the ship and firing weapons. The controls are customizable should you not find the default layout to your liking. There are also some decent difficulty options. There are a few mildly confusing things, such as some enemies “wraparounding” the screen and some not, and information in the menus that isn’t super easy to understand at first.
Is it any good?
Smooth gameplay, responsive controls, easy to play, nice graphics, decent sound (the music is mostly ambient, drum and bass and techno stuff), and lots of different ship setups and game modes. If you are looking for some kind of story or engaging narrative Nova Drift won’t provide, but if you are happy with a enjoyable, simple-to-play yet relatively varied shoot ’em this is pretty good.
Peter Öberg
A review copy was provided.