Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

Always keeping an eye out for a good time-filler to engage the family in afternoons, I saw this as an "Artemis Lite" with a candy coating and felt it would be great for after-work breaks with my brother. It did live up to that, but we haven't managed to complete the game due to burn-out, which I attribute to the game's design. My initial assumption led me to expect an abrupt and laborious learning curve, as there are multiple systems in the ship and each require a dedicated individual to use. I was pleasantly surprised to find an intuitive out-of-the-box experience. Each system is simple, requiring only one button and the analog stick to use, and switching between systems flows very well. The control scheme used to pilot the ship and aim weapons requires some practice, but overall it's very smart and controls are very responsive. Visuals are good and look great in animation, if a bit overbright (the screenshots are accurate, it's quite neon-colored), and all gameplay feedback, from visual to sound effects, is appropriately punchy and energetic. The unfortunate aspects of the game are its level design and saving system. Zones require anywhere between 20 to 50 minutes to complete, the latter in playing cautiously, and you cannot save your progress (eg: your ship's collected upgrades) between zones if at any time you save&quit the current campaign for a break or continuation another day. The final campaign level had zones which were terribly time-consuming, and given that there are 5 zones per campaign level, this turned out to be a deterrent from ever picking it up again. My brother and I just couldn't be bothered to grind from the beginning of the campaign, again and again, just to reach a point we had achieved the day prior and have a fighting chance against the boss. We don't have that much contiguous time, so it was an effort in futility to try and continue. It's overall enjoyable, but unfriendly to those who don't have large swaths of dedicated gaming time.