Super Alloy Crush is a 2D beat’em up that aims straight at every old-school gamer’s heart, starring a moody amnesiac cyborg and a wannabe treasure hunter working together to reach planet AE-38. Featuring challenging, fast-paced gameplay, gorgeous character designs, and a banger soundtrack, it becomes very easy to get lost in this futuristic adventure.
Currently in development through Steam’s Early Access program, Super Alloy Crush seeks to provide players with both a typical story structure and an alternate roguelike mode, prioritizing replayability once you are done with the game’s main stages. Alloy Mushroom has clearly put in a lot of work to make it so Super Alloy Crush reads like a love letter to the Mega Man series while still being able to differentiate itself from both its main inspiration and the many spiritual contemporaries that follow it.
Nightmare Devour!
Super Alloy Crush’s biggest selling point is its hard-hitting gameplay, giving players two different flavors of overpowered to choose between. Muu moves through stages like a kinetic wrecking ball, tearing through enemies with ease while dishing out endless air combos with her energy claws, while Kelly requires a little more setup, relying on special moves to deal most of his damage as he attacks from far away, providing a different type of satisfaction through his specialist playstyle. The differences between both characters help make the game inherently more replayable, and both Kelly and Muu serve as fun spins on Mega Man and Zero, both visually and mechanically.
There’s also a good bit of customization, as Muu and Kelly can gain different extra stats through a Tetris-like system where you slot chips into their circuits, giving higher control over certain aspects like critical hits, special meter gain, or health regeneration. Both characters also have different sets of tech arts, which can be collected in both the story stages and through the game’s roguelike mode, allowing you to expand your combo potential with flaming uppercuts and rider kicks that deal massive damage to enemies.
Things in Crushing Range
Early access currently features seven story levels spread across three chapters, allowing us to fight against the steel hive, a robotic faction that kidnaps civilians to transform them into mindless drones, and the stellar sect, a group of bandits who worship violence and music above all else. Every stage is punctuated by a chaotic boss fight that requires you to think on your feet, with the boss’s patterns evolving as you break through their multiple health bars. The game picks up in difficulty surprisingly fast, and by the second chapter, you’ll be taking some heavy damage if you don’t pay close attention when fighting bosses or super-powered omega enemies.
To keep players busy while future story chapters are in development, Super Alloy Crush also features a couple of alternate game modes, most notably Battle Frenzy, a set of roguelite stages where you fight against waves of enemies while buying items between rounds to become more powerful. I don’t necessarily love the idea of certain special moves and elemental attack chips being locked behind the roguelite mode, but for now, it serves as a good bit of mindless fun once you finish the current story content available, also doubling as a good way to grind for coins so you can harness the full power of your chip array.
Final Verdict
Super Alloy Crush is a spectacle in motion, carried not only by its great game feel but also by its incredible art style. If you enjoyed other Mega Man-adjacent titles like Gunvolt or Gravity Circuit, then you are most likely going to enjoy it as well. The roguelite mechanics leave a bit to be desired, as they aren’t exactly the most creative thing in the world and are only there so players have something to do while the story content is still being developed, but it’s not like the game’s roguelite stages are offensively bad.
While the game isn’t finished content-wise, it still features a deep level of polish that is especially highlighted through its frenetic moment-to-moment gameplay. There are very few rough edges to be found, and the game feels pretty “complete” as far as most of its systems go, making it a pretty safe bet for an Early Access title. Alloy Mushroom’s take on the 2D beat ‘em up genre holds strong thanks to their easygoing approach to exploration, great character designs, and banger soundtrack, all serving as the cherry on top to an overall very competent and fun gameplay experience.
