It seems like every other indie game released these days is a rogue-something that takes inspiration from either Hades, Dead Cells or Vampire Survivor – perhaps for good reason as some of their ideas completely changed or made an entire genre unto themselves. In Galactic Glitch, players control a ship that fights through small circular rooms, slowly upgrading while trying to get to the end and break out of a simulation they are stuck in.
Being so immersed in the genre lately, when a game strays from convention it puts itself on a collision course for disaster. Lest it try some new ideas that really happen to work, there are just too many hours, interactions and games that have honed various aspects of what makes a rogue-like/lite game any fun. Galactic Glitch makes the mistake of trying too many things without having any of the core fun aspects in place.
Hailing perhaps most from Dead Cells, the game revolves around navigating through a map, battling enemies in each room in twin-stick shooter format. The main gimmick is the ability to use a gravity gun to suck up stuff like asteroids or small parts of enemies to fire back at them. A typical battle revolves around spinning in a circle and shooting while occasionally firing asteroids. After several rooms there might be an occasional power-up and eventually a boss to fight.
The modern iteration of rogue-like games certainly could be argued to be psychologically addictive or harmful. With that being said, one of the key aspects that makes these fun and enjoyable is all the new flashy powers or weapons. This is one of the major areas win which Galactic Glitch fails. Fighting is very plain. The gun, while serviceable, is weak and the gravity gun isn’t much better. The game was clearly going for something greater with this, but in the end all that really happens is the player will spam the gun on anything they can find, then slowly spin in a circle shooting with the normal gun.
It will very often be five to ten rooms before players get a single upgrade, and these can be very weak, with minor stat adjustments like a +5 HP bonus. While there are some upgrades that give actual powers, such as shooting missiles or summoning drones, these are few and far between, and it is entirely likely a player will complete an entire level before a boss without a single upgrade.
The other area Galactic Glitch fails is how slow meta-progression or advancement is. Even after playing for hours, good luck affording even the most basic of upgrades such as some small HP boosts. While the game tries to style itself as more complicated or deep with additional paths to explore if certain powers are available, in the end it doesn’t really change anything. The player is still moving from one circular room to the next, spinning and shooting rocks.
Combat being so repetitious, along with the lack of getting any cool powers, kills it for being a good recommendation. There are simply too many other games in the genre that do any part of it better. There are ones with story, there are ones with crazy flashy upgrades, there are lewd ones, mindless ones, and so on. Galactic Glitch feels like it never gets off the ground, and ironically holding back so much power from the player reduces it down to the base form, which is severely lacking.
