The soundtrack reinforces this retrofuturistic ethos too, with pumping synthwave throughout from artists such as 3Force and Scandroid. The lighting effects and bursts of neon throughout are stunningly gorgeous, certainly some of the best I’ve seen from an indie developer on the console so far. It’s a good fit, with a look and feel that harks back to some of the futuristic games of the original PlayStation such as N2O, Wipeout, and Viper. Whilst it’s available on multiple platforms, I played Curved Space on the PS5.
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This is a really nice novel mechanic that I’ve not seen often and it makes the game stand out compared to others in the genre, one of the levels is even a mobius strip! Your ship is hovering slightly above the floor of 3D levels throughout, but the twist is that gravity is relative, allowing you to flip over to the other side of structures in a manner akin to Super Mario Galaxy or Kula World. Inaccurate description aside, Curved Space is a reasonably original take on the multidirectional shooter genre. It’s a small thing to be nit-picky about, but when a game has lied to me before I’ve even figuratively got the shrink wrap off, that’s not a brilliant sign. As that isn’t the case here, this isn’t a twin-stick shooter. Call me old fashioned, but I’ve always felt that the key ingredient in that particular genre is the use of two sticks to control the action. The part that is (in my humble opinion) somewhere between an exaggeration and a bare-faced lie, is the “twin-stick shooter” part. It also lives up to the promise of being in the weirdest reaches of space, with gravity defying levels throughout (more on that later).
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This is certainly an arcade-style game, even insofar as it has lives and continues, something you don’t see all that often these days. Only by Midnight describes Curved Space as “.an intense arcade-style twin-stick shooter that takes the classic formula and plunges it into the weirdest reaches of space.” I agree with most of that statement, but not all of it. Reviews // 29th Sep 2021 - 11 months ago // By Gary “Dominoid” Sheppard Curved Space Review