Wavey the Rocket (PC) Review

The game revolves around this cute little rocket fellow known as Wavey, who is tasked with completing a bunch of precision-based levels. This is where a new gameplay twist comes into action - guiding the rocket along a designated path created by the player. The game isn't called 'Wavey' for nothing, as these wave-like lines are the key to navigating and completing these stages, and it's this design that is the main crux of the whole experience.

The control scheme that's expected of players to adjust to is incredibly counter-intuitive, feeling unnatural, to say the least, and taking so much time to comprehend, as to never feel satisfying to pull off. This insane difficulty curve is simply too complicated for casual players to wrap their heads around, requiring far too much time to learn that it's enough to put them off the game almost instantly. Once the controls have been somewhat grasped, the discouraging ranking system, collectible placements, and timers filling the screen were enough to make every stage an unpleasant time.

This is structured in a way that seems to suggest an optimal route through carefully placed lines, nabbing every collectible in sight and raking in the high score. However, due to the complexities of the gameplay itself, grabbing every collectible was near-impossible, as even being slightly off with these lines will have Wavey zip right past them, giving off such an empty feeling when completing these stages. While the collectibles were never required from the player to progress further into it all, seeing an awful rank at the end of each stage was enough to prevent any sort of fun from this ordeal.

Simply put, this is too difficult. This difficulty doesn't come from genuine challenge and clever design, but through poorly executed gameplay mechanics and complex control schemes. Digging the grave of this game even further, the level design never evolves or introduces gameplay-changing concepts. Rather, it introduces new obstacle types that require the same strategy for all stages - avoiding them. There's never any new approach or cool technique to get past these tricky obstacles. It's simply the same repeated structure for every stage, making them feel uninspired, tired and repetitive.

There are some nice and funky tunes to kick back to, but even this has the repetition issue of the level design. Many of the stages share the same music, to the point that it added to the boredom of these already tired levels. Wavey also fails to deliver a smooth experience, as the performance issues encountered on the PC version were bafflingly off-putting. Even on decently built hardware, this game struggled to keep a consistent frame-rate, adding to the already problematic design. While Wavey looks nice for what it's going for, technically speaking, there should be no issues running such a simplistically artistic title on modern hardware.