Arcadium - Space Odyssey is a fun blend of bullet heavens and arcade classics like Galaxian

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SHOULD I PLAY ARCADIUM - SPACE ODYSSEY?

Check this one out if you’re a fan of bullet heaven games like Vampire Survivors and are itching for a dose of vintage arcade action. Arcadium - Space Odyssey is technically a twin-stick shooter, but it has that great sense of power progression that makes Vampire Survivors so rewarding. You fly around in space, land on planets to gain resources, and blast tons of alien spaceships to try to survive for fifteen minutes at a time.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played about two hours of Arcadium - Space Odyssey. I unlocked the first three biomes and a few new ships, each of which had two unique abilities. While my first ship could drop a screen-clearing bomb that would wipe out a whole wave of enemies, another one gave me the ability to teleport a short distance forward and drop a miniature black hole that warped the screen around it and sucked every ship toward its center. They actually gave it an event horizon! Each run took me between five and fifteen minutes, and I’ve done about a dozen so far.

WHAT'S AWESOME ABOUT ARCADIUM - SPACE ODYSSEY?

• It’s just a touch more demanding than Vampire Survivors. Arcadium does feel a lot like the popular bullet heavens, but because I had to aim, shoot, and use abilities myself, I felt more actively engaged. However, Arcadium - Space Odyssey never made me feel like I had to be riveted to my screen either. It was still relaxing enough to play while listening to a podcast or keeping an eye on my email inbox.

• Landing on planets. A key part of each run in Arcadium is landing on planets, and keeping with the “active but casual” vibe, landing is an action I had to focus on just enough to grab my attention and pull me out of brain autopilot. When I approached a planet, its gravity would start to pull me toward it, and I’d have to turn my ship around to land bottom-first. It wasn’t difficult to do, but I had to pay attention—pulling off the maneuver properly made a little green “perfect!” appear, and I got a little dopamine rush every time it happened.

• Cool abilities. I mentioned the black hole ability earlier, but there were plenty of others to unlock along with each new ship. One I wound up using a lot was the ship with a fiery dash ability and a swirling firestorm that damaged anything at point-blank range while it was active. Each ship I unlocked encouraged me to think up new ways to approach each combat engagement, and I was always looking forward to the next one I earned.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT ARCADIUM - SPACE ODYSSEY?

• Gravity can be weird sometimes. According to physics, this is also true in real life. All the same, though, it was a bit annoying to find that gravity wasn't “kicking in” at the right time when I approached certain planets.

• Large empty areas. Again, this is also the case with real-life space, but in a game whose runs are only fifteen minutes long at most, I felt that there were times when I wasn’t really doing very much. Usually I could at least see a direction to travel in based on the green markers pointing toward nearby planets, but a few times I wandered out into areas where nothing was close enough for a marker to pop up.

PLATFORM TESTED

PC via Steam.