Dreamwave Labs is launching into orbit with the company’s upcoming top-down space shooter, Perihelion. It is a physics-based space combat roguelite where gravity is your best friend as you orbit the planets and stars during missions. With Perihelion still in alpha, I was able to test the first five operations of the game and the RPG sections with the crew of the titular ship. With everything the game had to offer, I enjoyed my time, but the flying and combat are where the game really shines.
Making a Name for Myself
Perihelion is broken up into two main parts: your time spent on the ship and the time spent flying operations. While on the Perihelion, I could spend credits to purchase new ships, weapons, and upgrades. I could then take time to read through the mods, which act as upgrades in the roguelite sense, since they’re given out at random when missions are completed. Before selecting my next mission, I’d check on the crew.
When interacting with the crew, I was given alignment choices instead of dialogue, which I liked more than I thought I would. I wasn’t trying to figure out how things might sound when my character spoke them. Instead, I looked at how I wanted to come off to the other characters. Due to this, I was never annoyed at any of my choices. I knew how I was acting, not what I would be saying.
Readying for Combat
Each ship had either one or two weapon slots and a special weapon that cleared out enemy forces quickly. Due to the cheap price of weapons, I found that after the first mission I was able to pick and choose any weapon to use. While I enjoyed flying with the different weapons, three of them really stood out. I found the laser melted through small combative forces with ease and destroyed larger enemy ships after just a few moments of focused fire. The reaper bullets were explosive and cut through smaller enemies like they didn’t exist, and the minigun did just as well as the other two combined, while sounding menacing. These three weapons were so powerful and fun to use that I forgot I had a special weapon most of the time. It’s because of this that I don’t think I gave the special weapons enough of a chance.
Missions were split between combat, reconnaissance, and protection, with each mission being fairly simple. Go to the first location, wait for the bar to fill, defeat the enemies, and move to new locations. While that may not seem the most exciting, each enemy encounter involved quite a few oncoming ships of varying strengths, and I’d have to fight them off while holding my point. This meant I was flying around in a small space dodging bullets and missiles while counterattacking. It was pretty hectic at times, and the flight difficulty made the whole situation more enjoyable.
Speeding Through Orbit
Flying in Perihelion felt reminiscent of the old arcade game Asteroids, but more difficult to get the hang of. At first, I was adjusting the thrust and trying to figure out how to properly steer, and it did feel a little cumbersome. After a handful of missions, I was able to adapt well to how the game controls work and set the ship to full speed, cutting the throttle to drift through enemy lines. I was also using gravity from nearby planets and stars to slingshot myself around the map, at times tripling my max speed. For all the early challenges I had, I found that the controls worked well once I got the hang of them, and they allowed flight to feel both controlled and dangerous at the same time.
Gravity is what most interested me about Perihelion. While I enjoyed speeding through space, I loved the idea that physical weapons and ships would be attracted to the center of these gravity wells. There are two weapon types: energy and physical. While the energy weapons aren’t affected by gravity, the physical weapons like the reaper bullets are, meaning that I could shoot and angle my shots around planets in an attempt to hit my target. In fact, the last bit of my time with the game was figuring out how to get bullets to orbit planets like angry wasps. I was so excited the first time I had a group of enemy ships fly into my bullet swarm and just disintegrate.
Final Thoughts
Once I figured out the flying controls in Perihelion, I found the game became really easy, with a few annoyances. As I mentioned before, the laser basically melted through enemies, the main physical gun caused everything to explode, and the minigun ended everything way too fast. The problem is that all the weapons were both the same cost and cheap, meaning I could pick a great weapon and run through the game way too easily without any early weapon progression. Speaking of the laser, it was the only weapon that would automatically flip the direction the ship was aiming if another target was closer, throwing off my drifting when taking on enemy formations.
Overall though, I’m really excited to see how Perihelion comes along. While things were too easy at times, the space flight was still really fun. I’m also extremely hopeful that gravity is used more throughout the game and story. I’m hoping that the excitement I found while playing this is only a small taste of what’s to come.
