Remote Life Switch Review

Remote Life
Developed By: Next Game Level
Published By: Ratalaika Games
Date of Release: May 27, 2022
Price: $18.99

Well I've been seriously blown away here. I've just experienced Remote Life, a new SHMUP from one-man dev team Mario Malagrino. I was honestly not sure what to expect when I saw the previews, but I can say with no doubts that this has been an awesome experience to play. It seems like lately these solo dev efforts (the Axiom Verge games for instance) manage to outshine a lot of recent releases from major studios. Remote life definitely falls into the category of outstanding solo efforts, and the production values are though the roof.

Remote Life is a horizontally scrolling SHMUP with a seriously unique playstyle and art design. The artwork is quite unlike any series I've seen before and has a techno-organic feel to it, and the animation quality id extremely fluid, it really needs to be seen in motion to be believed. As for the gameplay, the standard horizontal SHMUP gameplay has been blended amazingly with a dual-stick firing setup, which lets you aim at enemies anywhere on the screen. The difficulty is pretty tough on the default setting, but it's definitely fair. My only complaint is that you can collide with some of the items that look like they should be in the background, though it may be just a bug with the parallaxing.

The soundtrack is really unique as well, with awesome 80's style buttrock coupled with great synths. Then it switches gears and goes full on dubstep. On top of that there's dialog voiced with these bizarre voice synthesizers, and it totally fits the feel of the game. If the dev was going for an overall atmosphere to match weird 90's scifi, he definitely succeeded. All in all, Remote Life is a badass SHMUP, and I can definitely recommend it, especially at the asking price.