Nova Drift

Highly recommend. Super super super stimulating. The mod trees and wild mod system give a lot of strategic depth to both what to build and how to game your chances of building it fast, and the core action gameplay absolutely thrives on the core tradeoff between dodging and shooting (and corollaries like prioritizing targets to clear up space since ultra-tight dodging like in a Touhou-style bullet hell is literally impossible by design). One of the most consistently fun games out there. Aesthetically, the flat colors and simple geometry are always very easy on the eyes and can feel surprisingly creative, while the sound effects are satisfying and the music (which reminds me favorably of the FTL: Faster than Light soundtrack) sets the tone very well without ever getting stale. I do have a few quality of life gripes: First, you can't save a run mid way through--you either quit the run or you leave the game running. Usually not a problem, and sometimes it's even nice because it makes me think twice about starting a run on a whim, but when runs can last upwards of 40 minutes at my very low skill level it can kinda suck. Second, the default keybindings are questionable in a few places and changing them is a little annoying--if you just <Esc> out of the menu it doesn't save your changes or warn you it didn't save your changes, and for new players it's not obvious that the Fire/Thrust 1/2 bindings do the same thing (ideally there would just be multiple columns for the same control row). The default <Enter> to upgrade is a pain if you're playing with mouse controls (which is probably most people) because it's the only thing you need on that entire side of the keyboard (if you set it to WASD instead of arrow keys--which, I will say, it is very considerate of the developer to include as an alternate defaults set!), and once I unlocked the Research body I started finding it far too easy to banish stuff by accident either fat fingering right Shift while pressing Enter or just pressing left Shift as a stim. (My solution, which I advise for new players, is binding upgrade to Q and banish to E then unbinding the Strafe Left/Right controls since you can just use Shift+A/D anyways.) Third, experience flow is weird sometimes. I don't mind there being chance to it or there being missable orbs from enemies that flee combat, but it just feels bad to get too many enemies running away too early in the game to kill them all or for a huge wave to suddenly just get sucked up by a freak singularity. Singularities in general are just kind of unfun for me--I was absolutely wowed the first time I encountered one, but ever since then they've just felt tedious, having to spend what feels like the better part of a minute burst thrusting to effortlessly keep my distance or just dive straight in and emerge with a guaranteed proportion of my hull intact. I might like to see a future update overhaul singularities to be a wave type rather than just a random celestial hazard, still presenting risks of lost orbs if you haven't completed the previous wave yet but spawning with dedicated enemies that know how to not fall in. (Asteroids and comets, meanwhile, serve admirably to keep things dynamic *without* disrupting the flow of gameplay.) Fourth, this is kinda petty since Nova Drift has absolutely SPOILED me with how well and in-depth it explains so many of its mechanics and how mods affect them, but there are some holes in explanations of some things, particularly things like Salvo and Singular Strike that offer increases "with diminishing returns". I think more than anything this would be best covered for by letting you preview your stat changes on the mods screen. Fifth, visual clarity can be a little weird given the player's color can vary. This is very rarely a problem since it's kind of hard to play the game without tracking where you are regardless, but there have been a handful of times I've lost myself in a chain of knockback and heavy VFX then taken whole seconds to reorient myself because I just blended in with the enemies right next to me. The aiming hint is pretty subtle, and I like that, but (without mods like Blink) it and your shield VFX are the only things that clearly and consistently distinguish you from hostile entities, and the shield VFX aren't even there if your shield is down. That all being said, I wouldn't even think of all those things to complain about if this wasn't an AMAZING game. These are all things that it's very easy for a lot of things to do wrong that are also very easy to brush off and/or cope with--they only stand out because they're blemishes on an otherwise excellent experience. If you're reading this review asking "is Nova Drift worth my time", the answer is a very very firm YES.