Galactic Glitch Early Access Review

With an elegant design and mechanics that make it stand out, Galactic Glitch surprised me by providing many hours of fun in a genre that I’m usually not interested in. Boosting through each neon-filled area and throwing asteroids at enemies is far more addictive than I expected.

Look at the Pretty Bubbles

In Galactic Glitch, you play as a super-advanced ship created by an AI that realizes the whole universe is a simulation. Your goal is to help this AI break free and leave the simulation by exploring a glitch she claims to have found. Thankfully, the story of the game is not very intrusive; you can just ignore it if you don’t care much for it. Yet, it’s there and serves its purpose by adding a decent narrative and a reason for the game to be as it is.

At first, I thought that Galactic Glitch looked a bit generic. After all, it is a twin-stick space shooter with the universe as the background. Each area has the shape of a surprisingly well-animated bubble. Clearing a bubble allows you to move to adjacent areas, where you will find new enemies, sub-bosses that drop upgrades, or your way out of the level. However, the simplistic approach actually has much more to it than it seems if you pay attention.

The 3D models are detailed and the animations are fluid, make the game look more elegant than simplistic. With very smart use of colors and slightly different backgrounds combined with distinct enemies, hazards, and space junk, Galactic Glitch manages to make each area feel unique as you progress. What really impresses me is how I rarely feel like the screen gets so cluttered that I don’t know what’s going on.

To make things even better, Galactic Glitch has great music. There isn’t anything groundbreaking in its soundtrack, but it perfectly complements the frantic action without feeling intrusive or too repetitive.

Frankly, Galactic Glitch’s art isn’t particularly innovative. Nonetheless, it delivers a solid aesthetic that perfectly matches its gameplay at a very competent level that deserves to be praised.

Bringing a Rock to a Dog Fight

As for the gameplay, Galactic Glitch plays very much like most space twin-stick shooters you’ve seen around. You use the left stick to move and the right stick to aim. You can shoot and dodge, and eventually, you’ll unlock new guns and abilities. This is a roguelite game, so expect some meta-progression that will make it easier for you to advance and reach the harder levels.

I was surprised at how precise the controls feel in this game. In general, Galactic Glitch seems incredibly polished. I had no slowdowns, always felt like I had control of my ship, and didn’t find any glitches.

The game’s most distinctive feature is its grab mechanic. In Galactic Glitch, you can grab objects like asteroids and space junk that are smaller than your ship and throw them at amazing speeds at your enemies. Doing so deals more damage than your regular weapon and can often temporarily stun enemies, interrupting their attacks. This becomes even more fun when you realize that you can grab smaller ships and use them as projectiles, too!

What impresses me about the game is that no tool is particularly overpowered. You need your gun when you can’t throw objects, and you must learn what enemies do so you can properly dodge their attacks and survive until the end of each stage.

I also particularly like how attacking fills up a gauge that allows you to perform a more powerful attack that is different depending on the weapon you choose. For instance, your railgun will shoot a long-range piercing shot, and your homing missile will spawn dozens of homing projectiles at once.

If you think that sounds exciting, wait until you learn about how some upgrades you collect along the way actually turn your defensive maneuvers, like dodging and boosting, into weapons. For instance, one upgrade makes you spawn a homing missile after dodging. Another leaves a fire trail that damages enemies when you accelerate your ship. With the right upgrades, your defense mechanisms become equally important in clearing up enemy waves.

If you manage to get into a certain rhythm, you’ll be able to constantly charge up your special shot while attacking enemies with your gun, grabbed projectiles, and even your dodge. That’s when Galactic Glitch clicked for me. At that point, I was finally able to truly appreciate what Crunchy Leaf Games managed to pull off here.

No Glitches, But the Simulation is Faulty

As you’d expect, some areas end in different paths, and after a few areas, you’ll face bosses and the game will get harder. You’ll get upgrades that you’ll lose when you die, but you’ll keep one kind of currency to spend on the “meta progression shop” to make your ship better

This is the part that I usually dislike about roguelite games because, more often than not, I feel like the game is artificially extended by balancing it in a way that I need to die a lot before I can progress. After all, I’ll need to buy the upgrades before I can properly face the hardest levels.

The other bad thing about roguelites that is not for me is how trivial, repetitive, and eventually annoying the first levels become. You either learn all there is to learn about the first enemies, and the first levels become super boring, or the meta-progression makes you so strong that the first challenges become trivial and, therefore, boring.

To make matters worse, although the permanent upgrades you buy do make you stronger, they are not very exciting. I find that this is the biggest issue with most roguelite games I’ve played, and it’s also present here. I do not want 10% more damage. Although more damage is good, small increments are incredibly boring.

Having one more heal to use, on the other hand, or seeing my life bar get bigger, are more interesting and exciting upgrades. Being able to clearly see the difference an upgrade makes is always better than knowing you got a 10% bonus. I’m sure that if the devs can make these permanent upgrades more desirable and fun, this game will be something else.

Galactic Glitch does have a roguelike mode, which I sincerely appreciate, but I still think it needs some more fine-tuning. That is the only real issue I have with the game. And let me say that if I’m playing a game that I didn’t think looked interesting but had a lot of fun with, and my only gripes are minor balance issues and the meta progression, I think it says a lot about the developers and the game.

The Verdict

I didn’t expect to enjoy Galactic Glitch so much, but 15 minutes in, I was hooked. I couldn’t stop playing for the first couple of hours because of how fast-paced and addictive the gameplay is. Aside from the meta-progression and the difficulty spike in later levels, there wasn’t much I truly disliked during my time with it.