Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime Review

You are sitting at home with a loved one or friend, nothing is on tv, you have plenty of single player games and not many multi player ones. Then all of a sudden you come across a game scrolling through the store of your system. Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, it catches your eye with a glisten, like the sun reflects off the surface of the sea. It is an action platform game, single and multi player (much to the joy of your friend or loved one) by Asteroid Base.

You start by exploring and repairing the galaxy, as you harness the power of Love to unite the Galaxy from Anti Love, in a spherical prototype ship you control, and fly around on randomly generated maps. The ship has four turrets, up, down, left, and right, one engine, a shield which covers a quarter of the ship (which can be moved) and a super weapon constantly spinning around the ship called the Yamato Cannon. Dotted around the maps are little creatures to save to allow their own love to open the heart shaped portal to the next level. You are briefly shown a tutorial level which is quick and simple to be shown the controls, this is where the single player or two player element will come into the scene. If you choose the single player campaign you will have a pet to control as well as moving around the ship yourself. A cat called Kepler or a dog named Doppler, they can check the map, defend the ship using the shield or attack using the turrets and Yamato cannon. You yourself can fly the ship as well as use everything else.

“Playing the game by yourself can be rewarding but it excels as a couch co-op”

Now you realise that it is also a couch co-op, communication is a must. One of you will be flying the ship, this can get tricky at times as you will be flying through small tunnels, tight areas, next to exploding mines all whilst trying to avoid the asteroids and killing enemies too. If you don’t and your partner is not paying attention or not quick enough on moving the shield, you will lose your overall shield bar or “health” of the ship. It will explode and you have to start the level over again. This can be frustrating as each level is relatively big requiring about 20-30 minutes of gameplay. So communication is a MUST. Your partner will be using the turrets, shield, Yamato cannon and map, or split it all between you depending on what situation you find yourself in.

Each piece of equipment on the ship can be upgraded apart from the map, this is done by collecting gems on your journey. There are three types of gem to pick up, the metal gem, power gem and beam gem. By placing one of these gems into one of the turrets, engine, shield or Yamato cannon it will change its properties, for instance, the metal gem placed into the engine will allow you to drop spikes whilst you fly, like a mine, which in turn will kill an enemy once they hit one. Second is a beam gem, placing one of these p into one of the turrets changes it into a beam cannon. Later on you will upgrade to allow multiple gems into each piece of equipment.

“All the ships and characters are very easy to control plus once you get used to moving your pet about it’s very easy.”

There is six unlockable ships which can be acquired by collecting the creatures, you also start with two selectable character but this raises to five selectable ones. All the ships and characters are very easy to control plus once you get used to moving your pet about it’s very easy. The difficulty of the game varies as you get further into the Galaxy, although if you’re finding it too easy with a friend or on your own you can raise the difficulty. The game consists of four campaigns, each campaign is a constellation, each constellation has four levels and a boss. Each campaign needs you to save a different creature these are bunnies, foxes, frogs and ducks.