At first glance, Inferno+‘s self-designated label as an Action-RPG seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. The upgrade system is fairly limited, you’re given no context for your actions, and while there are non-linear maps to explore, your only objectives are to find keys and locate the exit. But don’t let its bare-bones arcade presentation fool you: Inferno+ is a surprisingly engaging and stylish dungeon crawler, stripping both its parent genres down to their cores for one of the best action experiences on the Play store.
Inferno+ doesn’t have a moment to spare for any sort of exposition: you start a new game, select your ship, and leap right in, with only the most necessary of gameplay instructions found by hovering over the occasional information bubble. You know you’re here to shoot things, and the one-man team at RadianGames clearly respects that by placing all his efforts into creating a sublime arcade-style experience. The game’s spartan presentation succeeds thanks to a strong visual aesthetic that feels like a mix between Geometry Wars, Tron, and Osmos, with shifting neon hues imposed over a retrofuturistic grid. There’s a prominent circular motif—every element of the game is rounded- and the result is a lush and unified visual design. The electronic score and sound design are both quite well done and fit with the aesthetic, even if the score can get a little repetitive at times.
The gameplay is built around Smash TV-style twin stick shooting, coupled with a depreciating/recharging shield mechanic that can be deployed to get out of hairy situations. Players can also pick up bombs to clear out a screen, but these are relatively scarce. Customization focuses around different permutations of weapon and shield types in each ship layout. Each ship allows for highly varied play styles depending on how much emphasis one puts onto the balance of offense vs. defense/escape. This balancing act carries over to the upgrades system as well, as while the options for upgrades are limited to the basics, it is impossible to max out your stats in a single playthrough, forcing players to make a few tough loadout choices and experiment with play styles.
Inferno+‘s greatest strength comes in how it forces players to approach levels in a way that might not be instinctual for this kind of shooter. The levels themselves revolve around navigating through an increasingly perilous map, searching for keys to unlock gates and find the exit. After easing players into its mechanics , Inferno+ turns the corner from good to great in its fifth and sixth stages, with the introduction of more varied enemy types that create a central tension between the genre-endorsed urge to destroy everything in sight, and the increasingly insurmountable hordes of enemies that block your ship at every path. Even for the most skilled and offensively-minded of players, by the second or third quarter of the game it becomes almost impossible to outright eliminate every enemy on the screen. The labyrinthine level design coupled with more bullet-invincible enemies than you have bombs to dispatch forces you to reconsider your strategy.
As a result, you’ve got an astonishingly open-ended twin stick shooter, as the only requirement in each level is to reach the exit. The result is a game that keeps the player in a constant state of uncertainty and tension, unsure they can ever count solely on raw shooting skills or crafty shield deployment. The best twin stick shooters all carefully play on that counterbalance of movement and shooting in order to dodge and weave from danger, escalating the tension all the while. Inferno+ takes this to an entirely new level by putting players in situations where they can’t rely on shooting their way out, a position of comparative powerlessness. By the game’s latter half, many levels end up playing out more like a claustrophobic chase scene than anything else.
The boss fights at the end of each ten-level set, while challenging, serve to slightly break this kind of frantic tension, as they seem to be taken from a different, more traditional twin-stick shoot ’em up. It reminds me of the issue with the bosses in Deus Ex: Human Revolution—the bosses here are far from a dealbreaker, but they sideline the open-ended gameplay that drives each game in favor of a more traditional firefight.
Inferno+ has plenty of gameplay to offer for $2, with 40 levels, three difficulty tiers, secret timed bonus levels, and a New Game+ mode. The game also offers a procedurally generated “scorched mode”, tasking players to survive for 90 seconds, with three “semi-randomly” generated maps and pre-determined loadouts. It makes for a fun diversion, but the generated maps don’t have quite the same compelling tension as the superbly designed main campaign. From a technical standpoint, everything works almost perfectly; for all its lush visual design and scores of onscreen enemies, Inferno+ runs capably even on weaker devices. There’s no option to use a gamepad, but the virtual controls work well, and are easily customizable.
All in all, while it may not be particularly groundbreaking, Inferno+ draws from its RPG and twin stick influences to create a phenomenally tense action experience, and one of the best top-down shooters on any Android device.
