One of the great things about a new genre isn’t just all the games that play in the same sandbox, but also seeing how it effects other titles as it’s scavenged for parts. It’s happened before, with Binding of Isaac’s randomization influencing seemingly-unrelated games like FTL, and now Vampire Saviors is well underway to do the same thing. Whisker Squadron is a fully-featured take on Starfox that’s been in development for a while now, and one of its gameplay modes was going to be a single run across a randomized planet divided up into ten levels, with the familiar “collect experience and choose one of three random abilities on level-up” upgrade cycle. The problem is that the gameplay mode wanted to be a full game instead, so Whisker Squadron is on hold for a bit while Whisker Squadron: Survivor takes the lead. After playing a good chunk of the demo I can say this seems like an excellent plan.
Whisker Squadron: Survivor takes place in a synthwave arcade-space, with glowing neon filling up the spaces that aren’t made of lasers or bug-enemies. Sylvia flies her not-Arwing down an endless corridor of buildings and enemies, dodging the one while trying to destroy the other as the skies get continually more crowded. More enemies means more experience, of course, and the level-up bonuses come at a good pace. Some skills are your basic upgrades, increasing the power of shots and bombs, while others reward risky flying with a short-term perk or provide new abilities such as enemies exploding with chain lightning. Each run ends with the score being used to buy permanent upgrades, not to mention new cat-pilots and eventually other fighter craft. The demo is an advance peek at the upcoming game so there’s a lot of tweaking and content to come, released well in advance of the Early Access launch that’s currently projected for the end of January, but for something this early, Whisker Squadron: Survivor feels bursting with potential. It’s got a good variety of enemies that get persistently more troublesome, controls that feel just right, and action that heats up quickly.
The demo is availablenow on Steamand worth the time for several rounds of Survivors-style rail-shooter mecha-bug decimation.
