Super Crate Box follow-up

I quite enjoyed composing my opinionated review of Super Crate Box the other week. If you've not read it, do so here; or not, if you enjoy missing things. The departure from my usual style was apparently a popular one, with my little despondent blog being inundated with newfound traffic, certainly due to the wit and eloquence with which my critiques were presented. For the record, "inundated with traffic" here means "viewed by about 20 more people than usual" and "the wit and eloquence with which my critiques were presented" is a discreet euphemism for "a charitable mention on the developer's Twitter".



I feel I neglected some opinionated information in my previous foray into reviewing, so consider this a follow-up. Here's what remains of my impression of Super Crate Box:

While the game features only three enemies, each performs a niche role to make the game challenging and entertaining. I've nerded up pictorial a list:

These are the main fodder on the enemy roster. They waddle from the spawn to the fire pit and require a minimal amount of damage before being dispatched. They spawn alone, or sometimes in groups of three. At least someone has friends.


These lumber from point to point,  requiring approximately twice as much damage - and nerve - to defeat. I really like the design on these guys; they feel like a mutation of the smaller ones, with every aspect increased in ferocity.

These flying skulls drift from the spawn point towards the player, like deadly flotsam on an invisible sea. They don't go in the fire pits, so there's no danger of them re-appearing at spawn, deranged and seeking your death to quench their blood-lust. They tend to attack directly from above, perhaps to hinder camping.

Don't get me wrong, all is good and well in List-Of-Super-Crate-Box's-Enemies Town. However, I feel that some more diversity could be injected into the game's catalogue of enemies without sacrificing its arcade-style simplicity and the distinctiveness of each foe. A creature that spawns smaller hostiles upon death would result in a greater opportunity for the chaotic fun that the game features, and would add further strategy. I envision a pulsating, fleshy seed pod that slowly crawls across the level on its veins, roots or tentacles, like a pixelated Triffid. After its leathery casing is pierced, the pod collapses along with the core creature, resulting in the release (or perhaps birth) of four or five smaller, faster and weaker bugs. These too could belong to the skull school of character design.

Other features I'd like to see implemented in the future:

- A training arena, in which the player can test their unlocked weaponry on any amount of any enemy of their choice.
- The ability to toggle certain weapons (or sets of weapons) from the game's rotation, at the cost of recorded high scores. I'd gladly swap my high scores for a opportunity to rid my life of those fucking dual pistols.
- More levels! While the three included do offer a good variety, and the two of those three that are unlocked are done so at appropriate intervals, the game's simplicity can result in stagnation if the setting isn't frequently changed. An industrial level with conveyor belts, perhaps?

So, that's the entirety of my impression of Super Crate Box. I intend to play it feverishly for a while longer.