#cipher prime

Making its debut on the Humble Bundle, Intake is self-described as "a retro-futuristic drugstep arcade shooter", and a "polychromatic love child of Dr. Mario and Ikaruga".  When I started up the game and was confronted with the Unity engine graphical settings, I noticed that they had been changed from the default settings to just three: "Pep Rally", "Dance Party", and "Sparkle Party".  I chose "Sparkle Party", which sounds much more fabutacular than mere "Ultra" or even "Beautiful", and wondered just what the hell I was getting myself into.  As it turns out, the premise of Intake is simple: shoot the pills falling from the top of the screen.  Pills will be one of two colors and you right click or hit the spacebar to change the crosshair's color.  Shoot pills with the same color to score points and rack up your combo multiplier.  Shooting a pill of the wrong color won't end the game, but it doesn't contribute any points and it breaks your combo.  If a pill gets to the bottom of the screen, you 'overdose' and lose a life.  This is a game in which you're literally shooting drugs.  That is to say, you're shooting at them.  It's a simple premise, and it puns too.

That said, it's a premise that doesn't sound particularly engaging.  In a nutshell, you're shooting at stuff that isn't moving in a particularly interesting fashion and doesn't really fight back.  However, despite what seem like overly simplistic mechanics, Intake works really well.  These are simple mechanics polished to a mirror sheen.  Pills explode, fragments shooting across the screen, and as your combo meter goes up a crowd starts cheering in the background.  It's cathartic and oozes a frantic neon-colored nightclub vibe.  At the same time, the action remains clear, and I've yet to feel that the graphics get in the way of the gameplay.  The difference between shooting a pill with the correct and incorrect colors is easily identified in the midst of the action, both graphically and audibly, which has saved my score on more than one occasion.  The entire game feels smooth and well-crafted, with great attention to detail.  Sure, it will become repetitive and begin to grate over longer periods of time, but this game was meant to be played in short bursts.  I personally like to pick it up whenever I'm bored and feel like trying to beat my old high score.

There's a surprising amount of depth to the mechanics too, which become essential when you reach the higher levels or encounter a special challenge level, such as "Acceleration" which drops fewer but much faster pills, or "Flood" which literally fills the screen with pills.  There's a barrier at the bottom of the screen which will prevent any pills the same color as your cursor from dropping past it (useful for catching any pills you missed in "Acceleration"), and once you've purchased powerups in the store they will drop every 15 consecutive shots, which makes precision very important in "Flood" or "Minefield" levels as shooting a pill of the wrong color or missing a shot will break your combo and delay your powerups.  There is also, of course, the fact that you can shoot pills with the wrong color, which may break your combo but will also prevent you from losing a life.

"Milligrams" gained by shooting white tablets during bonus levels and after you've overdosed are used to purchase upgrades, such as more lives, powerups and upgrades for powerups, more color pairs, and more music.  There's also another game mode titled "Gunship", which I have yet to purchase (it's hella expensive) but I'm assuming it's some kind of oldschool top-down arcade shooter mode.  There's also a nifty "unequip" button for powerups, which can be handy if you personally dislike a given powerup (I found the one that made pills bigger tended to mess up my score) or can be necessary to get certain achievements.  There are 77 achievements in total, which includes both the standard progression ones ("Get to level x", "Shoot y pills") and some more unusual ones ("Gain a life and lose it within 3 seconds", "Fill the powerup meter with pills of alternating colors").  Definitely a good game for any achievement hounds out there.

As with all Cipher Prime games, the soundtrack is fantastic, even despite its dubstep leanings, though I'll admit that it's quite a bit better when heard in-game than on its own.  The initial three tracks this game released with were rather slim pickings, but an update added two more, including my favorite track so far, which bodes well for this game's future.  Another great bit of design is that the soundtrack will shift to different movements depending on how well you're doing.  It's always a great moment when you've got a long combo and the music stops briefly to inform you that "Side effects of Intake may include: feeling awesome, getting a high score, and dropping the bass."  And then the bass drops, and you do in fact feel awesome, and it's probably because you are, indeed, getting a high score.