Hostile Word is a floaty, side-scrolling arcade shooter that puts you in control of a space vessel exploring the surface of an alien planet and searching for the truth behind the sudden radio silence from the onworld research facility.
The levels of Hostile World play quite linearly; to complete each zone you’ll have to fly over to the end-gate and, after picking up your first weapon, you’ll need to kill all the area’s enemies to open the gate and advance. Any difficulty presented by Hostile World doesn’t come from its level design, which largely involves brainlessly firing of your weapon as you mow down enemy aliens. Instead you’ll quite quickly find yourself cursing the control scheme. The direction of your ship is determined by your mouse placement and your engine propels you forward with the ‘W’ key, holding just enough momentum to require constant adjustment.
While you navigate through the charming pixel-art tunnels, you’ll also be firing your laser with the left mouse button. While these controls work fairly well in a single screen game like Asteroids, Hostile World can be especially frustrating as your ship careens into walls or runs out of ammo as a hoard of alien bugs swarms around you. To make up for this, Hostile World has a very lax death penalty, simply spawning you back at the last checkpoint and allowing you to continue from where you left off.
Despite a few game breaking bugs in this build, Hostile World is already incredibly polished with flavorful tutorial text, an excellent soundtrack and exciting cutscenes. Powerups such as the incredibly useful “Hold To Shoot” powerup are especially fun to collect and the squelching sound that accompanies the demise of your enemies just feels right. At the end of the day, even with its odd controls, the demo for Hostile World is still worth picking up and playing.
Check Out a Hostile World Gameplay Video Here
Download or Play Hostile World Here (Win & Browser)