Gigapocalypse

Simple 2D games have their place when you have a short moment to burn without the effort of delving into a complex background story. Dino Run DX, One Finger Death Punch, Downwell are all fine examples of such. Enough unlockables, memorable tunes, several game modes and addicting high score hunt should prove an sure-fire formula to success, right? Gigapocalypse does one thing correct at the very start, giving you a taste of each creatures' full power and abilities without asking too much time. What follows after an exhilarating start is a slow grind of trying to finish escalating levels, inevitable failing them, and returning back to the monsters' playground to power it up for the next attempt. While the first monster will surely be the most memorable to you, all the following ones, albeit being different in appearance and play style, follow the same boring plan. You're destined to fail early levels. Then once you proceed to unlock powerful pets, all the subsequent levels become much easier suddenly. But the constant click-spam to get there won't get relent at any point and soon it all feels like a glorified Cookie Clicker, where instead of baking you get to demolish cities. There's not much variety in background music for each of the levels, but I do give credit for the historical themes and numerous references to popular memes. It's just too easy to play too much on one sitting because you know you won't come back to finish all the other monsters. Maybe if there was a full-sized special level for each of them, boss battles felt better tailored and progression was more carefully balanced, then I would grant a 4th star.

Where did Godzilla go? In the last decade, we've seen a small resurgence in the kaiju-genre on the big screen. Sadly, video games that capture this genre did not follow suit. With big studio's ignoring the potential of giant monsters, it's up to indie devs to pick up the slack. Enter Gigapocalypse, one of the games that tries to capture the joy of seeing giant monsters rampage through cities. The shortest way to describe it would be as a combination of the old GBC Godzilla game and a tamagotchi. Or, to put it in more detail: as your monster walks from left to right, you designate targets with the mouse and turn everything into rubble. Inbetween the rampages, you get to pet your chosen giant monster and learn it new skills. If you are a fan of the genre and this sounds good, then you can safely buy this game. For everyone else, a warning is fair. This game can be ROUGH. It starts off hard, then quickly becomes too easy. Your input is, as the other reviews here show, not very big. But! This is a game made by a solo dev, and their passion for this project and the subject shows in every little detail. Their are nine different monsters with different skills and movesets. Every beastie has it's own lore, filled with loving winks to the genre. And the game itself? It's like a little pixelart diorama depicting giant monsters and ludicrous settings, and you get to be friends with the monster. Is the gameplay shallow? Well, yes. It's the price you sometimes pay when buying a one-man project. But it shows such a clear signature of its creator that the charm is palpable. This game's strenght lies in that charm, in the little detail and neat visuals. For some, what's on offer here may be a bit to shallow. But for anyone that likes the idea of kaiju, giants or any other nasty and wishes they could pet Godzilla, this one comes with a stamp of recommendation.

The game is quite fun, especially for kids. It's a click and destroy with cute dino babies. It is also amazingly well done with good graphics, doesn't crash etc. However, I did not give it five stars, because it is too easy. You level too fast and basically become indestructible, and the challenge doesn't scale. For kids, many many hours of fun, for adults one or two hours before the lack of challenge bores you.

I bought Gigapocalypse not knowing much about it because it was super cheap on sale and I liked the pixelated artwork. Game is actually lot of fun, it reminds me of PS1 game Rampage where you pick your giant monster (also known as kaiju), and go around destroying town. You get score points from destroying buildings and enemies, which you later use to "evolve" your monster at the end of each round. Artwork and idea that you only use two buttons for the attack gives it feeling of arcade game (your kaiju moves on it's own like in sidescroller) and you don't have to worry too much about which skills to upgrade as your upgrade points are tied to your score points not skill points, so if you just play game long enough you can eventually get all the upgrades. First couple of runs you will fail because you will get overwhelmed, but after few upgrades, you will easily be able to beat the stages in just couple of minutes, so this game is perfect if you just want to play something for couple of minutes then move on to something else, and there are around maybe 10 kaiju to pick, each playing differently (while using same core mechanics), so there's enough variaty to keep you entertain.