Another week, another game mining for nostalgia. Anybody with a PS4/PS Vita and a hankering for Super Metroid now has the excellent Xeodrifter to scratch that particular itch.

The setting for Xeodrifter, because I’m loath to call it a story, is that your ship needs a part and you happen to be near four planets that might have the parts you need. It’s hardly BioShock, but a game like this barely needs a story.

Xeodrifter is all about the gameplay. Harkening back to the days of ‘Nintendo Hard’, this game offers a punishing but fair experience, and challenges the player with memorising the attack patterns of enemies whilst darting in to attack whenever the opportunity arises.

It’s Xeodrifter’s simplicity that makes it such a delight to play. At first, all the player has to think about is moving the protagonist left and right, shooting with one button and jumping with another.

The game grows steadily in complexity as upgrades are unlocked, all ingeniously offering welcomed tweaks to the gameplay, but the perfect pacing means that there’s just enough time to acclimatise to each upgrade before the new one comes along.

My favourite upgrade was the ability to shift between the foreground plain and the background plain. It meant that if the conditions were right and my timing was good, I could flit in and out of an enemy’s path, appearing behind it before proceeding to shoot a projectile up its backside.

The comparison to Super Metroid comes from the ‘metroidvania’ style levels present in Xeodrifter. At the start of the game, the player is given four planets to explore with no indication of which one should be the first. During my first planetary excursion, I came across an impassible body of water after five minutes and was confounded as to how to proceed.

Turns out, I had chosen the incorrect starting planet and needed to beat a boss on another planet first in order to acquire the ‘submarine’ upgrade that meant I could travel underwater.

I’m particularly fond of ‘metroidvania’ games, and Xeodrifter pulls it off well. You’ll find yourself flying back and forth between planets with each upgrade, as you remember that bit you couldn’t reach before because you didn’t have a rocket glued to your back.

When the game begins, the little space marine protagonist has three orbs of health. The result is that he can take three hits only, meaning the player has to progress slowly whilst constantly dodging enemy projectiles in order to survive.

The difficulty is increased considerably by the fact that there is a distinct lack of checkpoints. To get from the ship to one of the bosses on each planet can take around ten to fifteen minutes of intense action-platforming. Having to repeat that over and over again is predictably frustrating.

However, unlike certain popular games I could mention that are praised for their difficulty, Xeodrifter feels completely fair. If you die, it’s because you had a lapse of concentration or got too cocky. Any enemy can be bested right from the start if the player’s reaction speed is quick enough.

Even though it deprives the player of checkpoints during the levels, Xeodrifter is merciful enough to give a checkpoint before each boss (take note, Dark Souls). The bosses are very much a trial and error affair, so having the ability to instantly pop back into the action which each teeth-grinding defeat is part of what makes this game so well-designed.

One of Xeodrifter’s key strengths is that it leaves the player hungry for more. It’s lasts around two hours, which I felt was the perfect length. It never got too frustrating, and it meant that it was very possible to complete it in one sitting. In a game where the player has to get in the zone to be able to make any progress, being able to bash it out in one session makes a lot of sense.

As well as it’s short-length, Xeodrifter could be accused of laziness in other areas. The game consists of a number of boss battles, all of which are the same creature in a different colour. A little variation would have been nice.

Each boss has the same attack patterns, with the addition of a new move to keep things fresh, and admittedly each encounter feels progressively more challenging that the last, but it feels so half-arsed. Having six or seven unique boss fights would have taken Xeodrifter to another level.

On the other hand, as a short, superbly designed little game, Xeodrifter is already on another level. It shows how simplicity in game design can produce some truly enjoyable experiences, and how relying on nostalgia works if the developer can identify what made those old games so fun and accurately reproduce it. It might not be striving for progress or originality, but who cares when it’s this fun to wallow in the past.

Xeodrifter was originally released on 3DS and Steam, and was recently brought to the Wii U, PS4 and PS Vita. PS4 copy reviewed. 

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