Spin Rush | a Review
originally published on 07/09/2022;
Hello everyone, I am the colorful and wonderful G.E.M.Simov, a spin-based life-form, here to tell you about Spin Rush.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
This is a game with a simple premise. You, the Player, have got the A and the D key (alternatively, the Left and Right arrow keys). You press either the A or the D key, and a cube at the bottom of the screen rotates in the direction - left for A, right for D. The cube has 4 colors - red, green, blue, yellow.
From the top of the screen fall balls. These balls are colored - red, green, blue and yellow. You need to rotate the cube to match the colors - red with red, green with green and so on. Simple, right? Devilishly so. But then there’s more.
The balls that fall COULD have a word in them. The word is either red, green, blue or yellow, but the ball is colored in a random color. You, then, need to match the word, rather than the color of the ball.
But then there’s also a line that sometimes appears and it changes the color of the ball that is falling. It could be that the ball that was falling was yellow, and you had prepared yellow, and suddenly appears the line and changes the ball’s color to blue. You must then change the color quickly, before you mess up your streak.
That’s not all, though. The cube can, randomly, move to the top of the screen, and the balls start coming from the bottom of the screen towards you. That almost inverts the color’s positions and forces you to quickly adapt.
But the game is not done yet. There’s also the chance that a ball will actually be a hexagon, and any color wall will do for matching it - but then your cube turns into a hexagon, and you get two extra colors - dark blue and purplepink (magenta?) - and the balls that come down can also be those colors, and you must get used to the fact there’s now 6 walls rather than 4 and you need to tap the A or D key more and even more rapidly!
Couple all of that - which is pretty good - with explosive, high-energy music blasting violently into your ears and an incredibly intense visual experience, as well as the rapidity of the balls’ descent, and you’ve got an engaging, challenging experience on your hands.
Can you beat your streak? Can you beat MY streak? And, when you do, can you beat my streak in one of the other modes?
Indeed, there are other modes. This game features a leveling system - every time your streak is broken, you get a game-over screen and are prompted to try again. But the streak - which is a number - is then converted into points and is used as a means of leveling you up. Whenever you reach certain levels, you unlock a new mode.
FAST mode - in which the balls fall increasingly faster;
HEX mode - in which you are permanently 6 sided;
WORD mode - in which you are dealing with words exclusively;
TIME mode - in which you have a rapidly depleting line at the bottom of the screen, which ends your streak if you allow it to run out. To recharge it, you need to keep spinning;
TRIP mode - in which the colors change constantly, going from green to blue to yellow to red to pale orange to brownish yellow and so forth. It isn’t just the balls’ colors that change like that, it’s also the walls of the cube;
FLIP mode - in which you switch from being at the bottom of the screen, with balls coming at you from the top of the screen, to the top of the screen with balls coming at you from the bottom of the screen, and back, every three balls;
These all present their own challenges and unique means of playing the game, with each having its own streak that it tracks. And all of them feature unique songs.
There is one problem - one teeny tiny problem - which is that the amount of points needed to get a level grows greater with each following level, and the gap in between levels required to unlock a new mode grows. The most pronounced one is that between TRIP and FLIP, being 5 whole levels, each level taking a humongous streak to get to - or a multitude of smaller streaks. That somewhat kills the progression, but there’s no problem with that, because…
This game is just fun. The act of playing the game is engaging enough by itself to maintain your attention even if you feel as though you’re not making progress. There’s a feeling of great difficulty - some modes are monstrously hard to get a streak over 10, whilst in others it seems impossible to go beyond a certain value… But the game doesn’t actually want you to get obscene numbers.
Get 15 in this one, get 10 in that one and so forth. Nothing that’s unachievable, nothing that’s astoundingly challenging. The difficulty comes from you wanting to hear the songs in their entirety and to get a bigger streak… And that’s the best source of difficulty, because when the Player challenges themselves, that’s when things get good.
All that is made possible by some astoundingly fluid and responsive controls. It just feels good to play the game, and because of that, well… What can I say, it’s a tree, because it’s solid and tall. 3/3
Presentation
I get that the creators of this game aren’t native english speakers, but reading through the tutorial I was slammed with so many errors that I found myself dumbfounded. That’s barely an issue, but damn if it didn’t make me feel like the game’s quality was somehow taking a hit.
There’s also the fact that the tutorial’s text just cuts off. Literally. It tells me that as I progress I will level up over time, and that as I level up I… I do something, but it doesn’t tell me what. That’s… That’s a bit problematic.
Also, this game gives you epilepsy. Like, no joke, there’s so many rapidly moving, nigh-flashing colors that it’s almost painful for the eyes. It’s incredibly intense and energetic, and it actually looks really cool, it also feels kinda cool, it’s well done, but it’s so overwhelming…
Тhere is, thankfully, an option that somewhat addresses this issue. In the ‘light’ category, the white background - which features many gray-ish moving parts - can be changed to a black background. The black background, thankfully, is pitch black and there are no funky moving things in it. That, in turn, somewhat helps alleviate the immense visual stress this game throws onto you.
Another issue, however, pops up. Due to the fact that this game is quite color coded, and requires precise and clear visibility of that which is appearing before you, the fact that sometimes the background gets replaced by one of the colors that are utilized in the ‘cube’ is very bad, because, as an example, the incoming color is red, and I need to turn to red. However, the background is also red, and thus the red of the incoming color merges with the red of the background and I can not tell what it is I need to turn to. That’s a problem.
It also happens to coincide with the black background - having that might help with lessening the burden on one’s eyes, but the words that fall become a bit harder to make out, especially when they’re in a dark-blue hue. That’s when we’re in trouble, and that’s also a problem.
Aside from that, though, this game actually looks incredible. The cube in the center of the screen vibrates in unison with the music, it’s so energetic that you almost get the impression every single time you do something the game reacts in an immensely impactful way.
The music also really helps to increase the sensation of high-octane clambering. It is, frankly, very, VERY good music. I really like some of the tracks, and while others aren’t as good, they’re still very decent.
All in all, the presentation of this game is very crisp and very appealing, if a tad too busy. 2/3
Story
Unfortunately, there is no story to speak of. It’s just a fantastic little game, existing for the sake of the gameplay. That’s a good thing, but due to the fact that the ‘Story’ part of a review is about the story of a game, even if it is the emergent one (which is not present in Spin Rush)… There’s that. 0/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? Does this fantastic game get the point? Of course it does, with a resounding YES! I was astonished by just how smooth, how clean, how ACTION and how IMPACTFUL this game was. Still, I find myself really drawn to playing it, even if I’ve completed every achievement and there seems to be no reason to play it, other than to enjoy it.
That, then, is the sign of a truly good game. I just like playing it. It’s just fun to play. The gameplay is so solid that I’m finding myself drawn to it. Maybe not the gameplay, but the phenomenal synthesis of gameplay and presentation which meld into an astounding, sublime, even, combination that rivals even the most incredible games, gameplay-wise, out there… This is the tea, sis! 1/1
Conclusion
6/10. This is an amazing game. A hidden gem, a sublime piece of wonder. I’d advise everyone play it, but in short bursts, because it really does start straining your eyes… And also carpal tunnel.
Buy it when it is on sale, though.
I tuck it under my belt, another shining achievement that I proudly display. It’s good. Very good. Hardly could’ve been better.