I’ve spent most of the evening playing a fantastic new platform arena shooter called Super Crate Box. Now, I don’t really need to prattle on about how great it is - it would take less than five minutes for you to download this free game and find out for yourselves. However, what I am going to do is write a few words about the things that the developers, Vlambeer, have done really right from a design perspective.

Super Crate Box from Vlambeer on Vimeo.

Firstly, this game is instant fun. The tutorial for the controls took less than thirty seconds to complete, and then I was right in the thick of it. Not only that, but when you die, as I did frequently, a new game is only a single button press away. No loading screens or lead in, just instant action.

Next, the mechanics of the game, while simple, have been carefully constructed in such a way as to force the player into constant action. Scoring is based not on the plentiful critters to kill, but on the amount of crates you collect. However, each time you collect a crate you are given a new weapon, at random, from the array of interesting weapons in the little pixel dude’s arsenal. This forces you to constantly move and change tactics in order to progress.

In addition to this, you also have to contend with the fact that the critters will upgrade to a faster ‘angry’ form if they are able to reach the fire at the bottom of the screen. This means that you need to divide your efforts between picking up crates and picking off critters. It’s not enough to simply focus on one strategy over the other. If you only focus on killing, you won’t score any points; if you only focus on collecting crates, the screen will fill up with angry critters pretty fast.

Sure, there are a few annoyances with the game. In particular, like all games based on randomness, there are plenty of times when the roll of the dice makes it impossible to survive or proceed. It could be the weapon you collect, or the way the enemies spawn, but every now and then a good run of play will be ruined by an unfortunate turn of events. Also, my personal opinion is that the bounding boxes are a little bit unforgiving, and could have been tweaked to favour the player more. However, since the action is so frenetic, you don’t really have the time to rue these disappointments.

Overall, this game is a massive pile of fun, with gloriously chaotic action, plenty of items to unlock, and a cheerfully chunky visual style that harks back to the golden days of coin-ops and cartridges, without straying too far from more contemporary illustrative sensibilities. I heartily recommend this game to any and all.