Welcome once again to PCGamesN’s Spotlight on Greenlight, our regular Saturday feature where we look at the best and the most interesting Greenlight games that are hoping to make their way onto Steam. We’ve already looked at dozens of other titles in weeks past, so do take a look at our back catalogue.
Getting separated from your squad isn’t a good place to be for the pilot of a futuristic space fighter. Your batteries are running low and when their energy level hits zero your ship will shut down and, with it, your life support systems.
If only there were a series of haulage vessels carrying energy cubes that refuel your ship when you shoot them that could keep you sustained.
Yes, the premise for Futuridium is a little silly. The game’s a good deal of fun, though, so we can look past its set up.
Mixed Bag, Futuridium’s developers, have kept the mechanics of the game simple. You can shoot, move up, down, left, and right, and turn your ship 180 degrees. That’s it. This is a game about speed.
Each level is a haulage vessel dotted all over with bright blue floating cubes. Shooting the cubes feeds a little juice into your energy bar. If the bar runs out before you’ve shot all the cubes then you lose. Oh, and try not to hit any of the walls: you’ll respawn but with a chunk of energy missing.
As you work through the game’s 13 levels the energy cubes start being placed in more hard to reach spots. Because you can only fire directly ahead and you’re unable to tilt your ship, shooting blocks is a little like doubling back on yourself in Snake. If there’s a like of cubes hidden behind an indestructible wall, you need to fly over them, drop down behind them, hit the 180 button and blow them up from the other side. Of course, when you’ve cleared the line of cubes you have to avoid the indestructible wall that’s now right ahead of you.
I was playing on the easiest setting and that got pretty frantic. Each time you complete the game you unlock a faster game mode. You’d have to be ridiculously good to complete the game on the fastest mode.
While the game is on Greenlight, Mixed Bag aren’t looking to sell Futuridium. You can download the full game for free from their site or through Desura. No, instead, they want the game on Steam to have more people testing it. They want to build an audience. They’re even promising to re engineer the game if it gets onto Steam, integrating all of Valve’s Steamworks benefits into it.
Futuridium is a good game and deserves to be on Steam. Also, that it would be free once it’s on the client, well, that’s just a little lovely.