Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 13/Jul 03:46

Hive Jump 2: Survivors – Preview

The original Hive Jump hails from 2017 and is a sidescrolling roguelite platformer you are encouraged to play with friends. The game we’re looking at today is the sequel which is still in Early Access: Hive Jump 2: Survivors. Though the title breaks away from its predecessor with its gameplay, being a top-down bullet hell where you survive various waves of enemies, it’s still quite fun. It’s time to go in guns blazing and wipe out the nasty aliens that took out our crew! In Hive Jump 2: Survivors you quite literally play as a sole survivor. After your crew was wiped out on a hostile alien planet, your character is the last man standing. And you’re out for revenge! You pick a soldier type and try to survive various waves of enemies heading your way. If you do that, you can consider yourself victorious in wiping out the evil aliens that killed your friends. While it’s not much of a plot, clearly this is not a story-driven game and we need no excuse to jump into some alien killing action. Hive Jump 2 has a great look to it, and you almost feel like you’re playing an arcade game. The pixel graphics are clean and colorful, though simple enough not to make the game too hectic even in later levels. For that same reason, we appreciate the backgrounds all being very dark, to make the enemies and in-game currency you need to pick up stand out better. We only wish the text was in a slightly more readable font. It got a bit tiresome to squint at the screen whenever we wanted to read the lengthy descriptions for upgrades and characters. Similarly, the soundtrack of this game reminds us of the arcade days and it’s great. The music intensifies in tune with the waves of enemies, picking up in tempo during the more combat-heavy parts. On top of that, you can never go wrong with the satisfying sound effect of an alien insect exploding into gore-y pieces. The game doesn’t have any voice acting. Some would call Hive Jump 2: Survivors a Vampire Survivors clone. The gameplay is relatively similar. You’re essentially playing a bullet hell with roguelite elements, meaning you don’t just upgrade your character during play, but also between each level. You start by picking a ‘Jumper’, or a type of soldier, which determines your starting stats and weapons. Only the basic Jumper is available at first, but you can unlock a whole roster of little soldiers as you continue. Similarly, only three ‘levels’ are available right now. That being said, not only do you need to beat each level with an increasingly high difficulty setting to progress, but the game is also still in Early Access and the developers have shared that new levels, weapons, and Jumpers are to be added later. Each level plays more or less the same. You are dropped in the middle of the map and have to survive waves of enemies being thrown at you, gradually getting harder as time goes on until the level is cleared. Sometimes – but not always – there’s a boss at the end. You have a jetpack which gives you small boosts and can be used to jump over enemies or get out of a tough spot. You can also choose whether you want the gun to be in auto-fire mode or not. When auto-fire is on, your soldier will automatically shoot at the nearest enemy, allowing you to concentrate more on moving around and avoiding enemy projectiles. While disabling auto-fire allows you to be more strategic about taking out enemies. Each enemy you kill drops goo. Every time you kill enough enemies to fill your exp bar and level up, you can use your goo to purchase various upgrades. You can turn up your rate of fire, make your jetpack last longer, and buy new weapons. All in all, the possibilities are endless. The game allows you to carry three weapons at a time, and with this amount of upgrades available, it’s easy to make a build that fits your playstyle. Moreover, by destroying eggs in the level, you can also pick up Ember. This Ember is used to upgrade your character between runs, heightening their passive stats like their health and damage. Conclusion Hive Jump 2: Survivors has a lot of content for a game in Early Access, and what it offers is already a very fun experience. Between the number of characters and the roguelite element of upgrading them gradually as you play, you can spend a good amount of hours with what’s there already. But we’re also excited to see what more the devs have planned for this game.