Galactic Glitch Review

Galactic Glitch is a twin-stick shooter with heavy roguelike elements and a really interesting physics system. I’ve dabbled in the genre before, but never really delved super deep. However, this has definitely made me more curious to try others out.

The story here is fine, but not particularly impressive: you’re a prototype ship created to break out of the simulation the game is set in, and there are hints that your creator may not be all they seem, but it’s not heavily focused on. The story is entirely sufficient and seemingly isn’t a focus, so it’s not a major loss.

The gameplay is the main draw of Galactic Glitch, and it’s good, if a little monotonous at times. As I mentioned previously, it’s a twin-stick shooter, with its primary innovation being a pretty fun physics system. Alongside your usual weapons, you have a gravity gun, which you can use to pick up objects such as rocks and boulders. You can even throw smaller enemies and projectilesThese do solid damage, and can even ricochet off the walls of each room, allowing for some interesting and flashy manoeuvres. You can also throw yourself into walls and slingshot around the arenas, which is pretty fun, but in my experience, is also almost entirely a bad idea. Doing this during combat typically ended up with me being launched into foes or projectiles, but I can’t deny it’s a fun mechanic despite that.

On the topic of rooms, this is where I draw a pretty big problem with the game: they’re all way too similar. There are no alterations to their shape; they’re all simply circular rooms with various different objects in them. Most of the variety comes from the different objects and enemies between stages, such as some areas having an assortment of explosives and traps, but it never really altered my playstyle. The biggest effect on how I played was the enemies, which I can confidently say are pretty good. There’s a solid variety of foes, each with different attacks and unique weaknesses, thanks to the way they work in Galactic Glitch.

Each of them are built up of a multitude of different parts which can be attacked individually. Most have a single health bar (beyond a few unique cases), but each part can break separately, reducing their potential attack options, or even having certain parts being immune to damage, requiring you to focus on others. It’s a satisfying system which adds an additional layer to combat. This goes for the bosses and mini-bosses as well, and there’s a solid variety of these.

The boss fights themselves are pretty simple, each of them has unique attack patterns, and for the most part, they’re pretty fun to fight, but they’re not the most interesting and become pretty easy after a couple of fights with each.

Progression as a whole is an incredibly mixed bag, both in terms of run progression and meta-progression. Run progression is pretty solid, as you advance through a run you’ll gather a variety of items and currencies: Glitch Charges and Glitch Tokens. The Charges give you access to secret rooms and hidden crates, the former sometimes contain items key to meta progression systems, or just a practically useless amount of shards which are the standard currency, while the latter contain a variety of items, from health pickups, to shards and orbs.

Glitch Tokens allow you to level up your Powers, which are perks which give you unique abilities, such as companions, buffs to certain moves like your dodge increasing in speed, or leaving pools of poison. You’re also able to get a variety of standard upgrades to your damage, movement and health; for every third upgrade, you’ll get an additional boost, including a more direct weapon improvement, altering certain effects, or even an additional dodge.

As a whole, it’s a solid set of systems, but it’s a little too random in a lot of cases. Sometimes I’m drowning in Glitch Charges and Tokens and have nothing to spend them on; other times I have barely any, but a lot of things I need them for. I understand randomness is the nature of roguelikes, but in this case, it just feels a little too heavy on that front.

Meta-progression is another mixed bag, and is probably my biggest issue with the game overall. It’s incredibly similar to Dead Cells, and I’d even argue a little too derivative as far as this aspect is concerned. As you progress, you’ll obtain Orbs, typically from killing bosses and minibosses, which can then be spent on new weapons (requiring a blueprint to drop randomly from certain enemies); new prototypes, which are different ships with different stat scaling and differing amounts of Power slots; along with meta-upgrades which are a decent variety of purchasable improvements, which alter different things such as increasing the amount of slots in the shop, or a higher spawn chance for crates.

The biggest problems come from the Boss Orb system and the permanent upgrades which lead to different progression routes throughout the game. Boss Orbs are dropped from each major boss the first time they’re killed, and turning these in at the hub world unlocks a higher world tier, increasing the difficulty along with adding new enemies, routes, and bosses. Conceptually, it’s a solid system, but to my knowledge, there’s no way to reduce the world tier once it’s unlocked, so it’s a forced, permanent difficulty increase. It’s not awful, but the ability to choose would be nice.

The biggest issue I have with meta-progression is the permanent upgrades, which contribute to a metroidvania-esque progression system. There are a lot of weird quirks in each level that just cannot be interacted with without the right tools, and due to the homogeneity of the level design, it’s hard to intuit if it’s a missing ability or if it’s a secret. Progression on this front just feels pretty weird.

As a whole, Galactic Glitch is generally solid, but there are so many annoyances that taint what should be a more entertaining experience. The general gameplay loop is incredibly solid, but there’s an unfortunate amount of monotony in some of the design decisions.