Polychromatic Review

Sometimes games that look incredibly simple and even boring on the outside, can come along and smash you out of the water! Polychromatic does just that. Polychromatic from ‘Brushfire Games’ on the outside looks so simple that at first I thought I would not enjoy this game at all.

The main concept of the game is essentially the player controls a small blue cube and has to avoid other shaped of different colors. with different weapons at its disposable. for example the right analogue stick can be pointed in any direction to shoot the other shapes and kill then. the bumpers active a ‘rush attack’ which kills all other shapes touched and can be used to get you out of a situation you would’ve otherwise died in. Finally the trigger activates a ripple around the blue block that kills all other shapes on the screen. These kills add up and allow the user to advance to the next stage of the game. This sounds pretty basic. But becomes increasingly more difficult as the user progresses through round.

Graphically as you can see in the photos Polychromatic isn’t too complex. However this really doesn’t take too much away from the game. with its relatively basic nature the small shapes and movement don’t require a lot of a graphic presence. Still with this in mind it really isn’t unpleasing the basic graphics in my opinion actually add to the retro arcade style of the game turning into a game that I really did enjoy. With the mechanics of the shooting as well as the movement it actually was completely fluid even with the higher amount of objects on the map that the later levels produce. Overall it really is a game where the lack of graphical excellence really doesn’t matter and in fact improves the feel of the game due to its retro style. If this was a game where everything was perfectly drawn into the shape of spaceships or something similar then I really think it would take the fun out of it.

The songs in this game I really did enjoy with upbeat music it really changed with the pace of the game. In the early levels the music was a little slower, but as the player rises up through the levels the beat of the music and overall feel of the game starts to get faster keeping the player excited and interested in the game. The sounds when any objects spawn in or get shot also just adds to the experience of the game in a great way. Due to the constant changes in the music and little additions dependent on each mode of the game this means that this game doesn’t have those dreaded loops in music that can get so irritating, so in that sense i really feel like this game does fantastically.

The game play i have already briefly mentioned but it really is a whole lot of fun. This game really did capture all the essence of an old style arcade game. with the analogue sticks being predominantly used to move around and shoot. the bumper buttons were also used to activate two special abilities. The game play is essentially incredibly simple stay away from other shapes and with the right analogue try to kill as many of them chasing you as much as possible. These blocks move in varying ways and at varying speeds meaning that as the player gets into the game it becomes a very hard challenge to keep up with the demand to dodge it all.

Overall Polychromatic really was fun to play, it’s one of those old style immersive arcade games that I really enjoyed. I specifically like the ‘one life’ mode and the ‘timed’ mode which are pretty self-explanatory but just added that extra little challenge into an already fun game. One which I will continue to play not only alone, but with friends. The only downside i see of this game is perhaps that it doesn’t have an immersive story line or any real substance. Despite this It is an incredibly fun arcade game but perhaps isn’t the kind of game that you could spend days at a time playing.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.