Quick Review: Saviors

I’m kind of a shmuck at shmups.

Always gotta have a tutorial.

Saviors, also known as Star Saviors, was developed by Sharpened Edge Studios and released to Steam on May 6th, 2016. In this world, the human race was contacted by an alien species that appeared benevolent at first. They thus traded technology secrets, but unfortunately, the aliens later betrayed mankind. All that stands before total annihilation is a secret project developed by John, a scientist gone rogue (who TOTALLY SAW IT COMING) who created fighter ships with tech the aliens don’t know about, as well as three pilots (one of whom is John's own son Jonas) to destroy the enemy armadas.

All three of them look like empty, soulless shells.
Their ships, however, pack some massive firepower.

Red means "Coming to the screen".
Nice, we know what's about to show up!

This is a fairly straightforward shoot’em up game in which you control your ship and go pew pew (with Z) at everything that comes your way. Each ship has two weapons, as well as a Bomb-type third weapon with limited uses in each level (shot with X), that’s standard for a shmup. There’s a leveling-up system based on the score you accumulate, with multipliers, as you kill things, and it allows you to upgrade the ship’s stats. One nice addition is the possibility to change the ship’s secondary weapon from aiming forward to shooting left and right with C, which is useful against enemies who may come from the sides or bottom of the screen. Speaking of, the enemies appear in red on the screen before they properly show up, like a warning that they’re coming; it can allow you to prepare. As for health? Your Hull, as it’s called, can be depleted, but only after your shield has gone down, so you don’t start taking damage from the start and the ship can survive a lot of blows.

Biiiig ba-da-boom!

Another thing that’s pretty cool is that, after every level, you gain new versions for both your main, secondary, and Bomb weapons, so you can experiment with different sets among all the options you’ve got for those three. It’s also nice that the levels play with camera angles to give the impression that your ship isn’t always just moving in a straight line. Lastly, you can freely change the difficulty setting between levels.

I almost feel bad criticizing the plot of a shmup, because… it’s a shmup. The plot will never be the most famous thing about it. It’s pretty generic, not gonna lie. I’m actually glad that the devs put everything in the gameplay. But, in return, we have these very uncanny valley-esque faces during cutscenes, which can do nothing but flap their mouths slowly and blink! It’s creepy.

Creepy AF.

Besides the Story Mode, the game includes a Score Attack Mode split in two: One is a Survival mode, the other is an Arcade mode. It’s also possible to play them in two-player co-op.

Shooting sideways? I don't recall seeing another
shmup letting players do that before.

This one is pretty cool. It’s a bit difficult to find new things to say about shmups, so it’s always nice to see some that add new mechanics or try new things (that said, with my limited experience and knowledge in the genre, I can’t freely say just how innovative any of these features are). Sure, the plot is forgettable and presented in about the most awkward way possible, but that’s not what we’re here for, are we? We’re here for the gameplay, and it delivers in every aspect. So yeah, if it’s your genre of predilection and you haven’t, feel free to check this one out.

Saviors is available for 1.99$ USD.