Well presented, but otherwise standard puzzle game.
GAMEPLAY
In Astropop, you play as a starship pilot flying through space. Using your tractor-beam, you can pull blocks from the top of the screen, and shoot them back up to match like colors. When you match four of a color, they pop. The object is to pop a certain points worth of blocks to beat the level.
New blocks are added in rows at the top of the screen. There’re also different types of blocks that have various abilities to help you. But there are also other blocks that hinder you, like poison blocks that you can’t break, and infect blocks next to them. Each pilot also has a “SUPA” weapon you can use to break blocks when you get into trouble. The space presentation of the game is well done, and the story mode plays well too.
GRAPHICS
The game is presented in a 2D format with cartoonish spaceships and characters. It works well with the light-hearted style of the game, and some of the explosion effects look nice. Yet you wont find anything really stellar, other than the general style. Some more graphical effects, or backgrounds would have been nice to mix things up.
SOUND
There isn’t a whole lot to the sound in Astropop. The same background music repeats throughout the game, and the only voice-overs you will hear are from the computer when you start a game, or make a combo. The effects for the blocks popping sound okay, but could have been better.
VALUE
You can unlock 4 pilots via the story mode, and each has a different SUPA weapon, but they otherwise play the same. There are a ton of achievements to unlock, which will keep players coming back.
Astro-pop really needed a co-op mode, or more unique pilots to make it stand out from other puzzle games. But otherwise, you’ll find that Astropop is a well-presented game that will be a new gaming addiction for puzzle fans.