Geometry Survivor [Review]
Geometry Survivor is a cross between Vampire Survivors and Geometry Wars that doesn’t reach its full potential
Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved is one of my favorite games of all time. Vampire Survivors created a whole new genre that I love, but good clones of it are in short supply on PS5. Naturally, when I learned about developer Brain Seal’s Geometry Survivor, I got very, very excited. Did it live up to the hype I created for myself?
Geometry Wars is a retro top down arcade shooter that creates an addictive loop by pushing the player to top their high score. It takes place on a black rectangular grid, where your vectorized ship moves and fires by using the two joysticks. As the game progresses, more and more vectorized geometric enemies swarm your ship. Colors are bright, almost neon, and sparks fly as you blow stuff up. It’s pure eye candy takes its inspirations and turns them up to 11; it’s classic arcade games like Atari’s Star Wars or Asteroids on speed and hallucinogenics. Geometry Wars is very fast paced, and extremely satisfying as your gun is upgraded to fire torrents of bullets at a time, going from a slow drip to an open firehose.
Geometry Survivor takes this concept and marries it to a Vampire Survivors-like. Now the player must survive until the twenty minute timer runs out. Over time, larger numbers and different types of enemies spawn and you must not just kill them, but also artfully dodge them so you’re not overwhelmed.
Like Vampire Survivors, enemies drop experience that you can pick up. Each time you gain a level, you get the choice to either upgrade one of your weapons or equip a new one from a random assortment. You can equip up to five weapons at once. Geometry Survivor doesn’t have either the support items or weapon synergies of Vampire Survivors. Instead, once you reach level four of a weapon, an item begins appearing in the level that will add a final, powerful upgrade.
The problem with Geometry Survivor is that it doesn’t offer the satisfaction, addictive nature, or progression of the games that inspired it. You never feel very powerful in the game. Part of the charm of Geometry Wars and Vampire Survivors is reaching the point where you’re killing hundreds of enemies at a time. Most of Geometry Survivor’s weapons don’t reach that level of destruction. There’s also something very unsatisfying about the cooldowns on all of the game’s weapons, and the default weapon never becomes powerful like Geometry War’s.
Vampire Survivors offers characters, weapons, and secrets that become available by doing specific actions in the game. As they progress, the game gives players motivation to experiment and discover powerful synergies. Geometry Survivor just offers a handful of new ships and basic stat upgrades, bought with credits earned while playing. None of its weapons interact with eachother. Once I survived twenty minutes, I earned the game’s Platinum Trophy. There’s no motivation to further boost your stats, and none of the unlockable ships are very interesting. There are no levels beyond the single one.
Geometry Survivors isn’t a bad game. It’s just too thin on content, and doesn’t imitate its inspirations well enough or innovate on them successfully to make the game more than a short distraction. It does have a killer gameplay music track, though.
Geometry Survivors will be available on February 21 on Steam for PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One / Series X|S, and Playstation 4 / 5.
Overall Score: 6/10
Played on: PS5
