Video Game Review: Relic Hunters Zero: Remix

Relic Hunters Zero: Remix

Rogue Snail

Top Down Shooter

Nintendo Switch

As a gamer who a: loves the roguelike genre and b: is dirt poor, I’ve spent many an hour browsing steam’s catalogs for cheap but fun games with that good endless replay value. On one of those forays, I found a little game called Relic Hunters Zero, the Remix of which is set to release for the Switch on May 7^th, 2020 for the price of 12.99. This strikes me as a bit of an odd move since Relic Hunters Zero is free on Steam and the follow-up game Relic Hunters Legend slated for release sometime this year is marked as free-to-play, but I suppose there is something to be said about the true mobility of the switch as compared to a laptop.

And make no mistake, dear reader, Relic Hunters Zero is absolutely the sort of game which benefits from portability. It’s a somewhat hectic top-down shooter comparable to Nuclear Throne in many ways, especially the small weapon pool and short stages, perfect for squeezing in a play session on the bus ride to work… once we have buses again, anyway. You shoot your way through hordes of weird alien things on a distant planet in pursuit of, predictably enough, relics. By finding three pieces of any relic you unlock it for activation on future runs, which gives bonuses such as increased health, shields, stamina regeneration – pretty standard stuff, but useful nonetheless. Also unlockable are five characters in addition to the two available from the start. Despite the relatively simple mechanics available to the player there’s a decent amount of variation between how they play, and their designs are both appealing and well-differentiated.

There are three game modes to be played, though they all use the same basic concept and gameplay loop with minor exceptions. There’s the standard adventure mode, where you fight your way through four areas divided into three stages and a boss at the end, an endless mode that loops on itself and features a weapon upgrading system and something called “Storm” mode, which takes a page from Risk of Rain’s book and has chests you can buy open on each stage as well as increasing difficulty based on how long you’ve been playing your current session. Now, all the mechanics that make up these modes – from the gunplay to the music to the procedural generation of the levels and the progression systems – are fine; fun, even! But honestly, there’s not a whole lot more to them, and thus not much reason to keep coming back to the game. For as much as I enjoyed my time with Relic Hunters Zero the one thought that kept popping into my head was “Is this all there is to it? There’s gotta be something I’m not seeing yet, right?” Unfortunately, unless there is somehow still something I’m missing, the game is fairly content-sparse.

I can’t say that I dislike Relic Hunters Zero, but I can’t say that I love it either. If not for the overall smallness of the game and the fact that it can be played for free on Steam, I think I’d like it a lot more, but as things stand it doesn’t really do much to distinguish itself.