Can you survive this sci-fi shmup?
Remote Life is a 2D side scrolling space shooter. The graphics are huge 3D pre-rendered sprites and are gorgeously animated. It is full of cool menacing monsters. The backgrounds look fantastic and fit perfectly to the Alien world. The Bosses look so infinity creepy and scary that the cg-artist had to design them with closed eyes. There are an immense number of weapons. You are surrounded by such a Brutal-Frenetic-Sci-Fi-Techno-Alien World that is so brilliantly credible that you can almost smell the gasses that the aliens create when you blast them off. The soundtrack fits perfectly to the theme and the pace of the game. This game is a full immersion in an unseen world.
After playing a cutesy shmup recently with Cotton Fantasy, it was a bit odd to dive into another shmup but with a completely different look and feel to it. Remote Life has some truly creepy aliens to fight which are brilliantly designed, but you also need to be wary of other objects in space such as barriers, asteroids, and whatnot, these can wreck your ship if you aren’t careful and you only get a limited number of lives in each mission, so making sure you don’t lose them on these are essential to victory.
There are 17 missions to get through and they naturally increase in difficulty, but shmup fans should be able to power through as long as they are careful. Trophy hunters will be happy to know that simply finishing the game should be enough to nab the platinum, though its definitely more challenging than most Ratalaika games…that’s for sure.
It’s impressive that Remote Life is made by a single person, and it also stands out more with its survival horror feel to it that you just don’t see with shmups, so it definitely stands out because of this. It may not redesign the wheel when it comes to shmups in general, but damn this horror vibe more than makes up for it.
The Verdict
Remote Life is an impressive horror shmup that is even more impressive when it was made by a single person. It has some truly menacing enemies to take on and is great fun from start to finish.