Review: Rymdkapsel

Posted by angelcruz2241991 on May 25th, 2013 | 7 Comments | Tags: rymdkapsel

Rymdkapsel is a space strategy game, and a pretty good one too. Rymdkapsel focuses you on building up your base, and expanding across the stars. It is super simple to pick up and play, and a game that you can get lost in for hours.

The game starts you off in a remote part of space. There are two tiny white dots, and the game explains to you that those are your minions. You use these minions to build up your base, defend it, and all other things to keep your base operational. All these things are done quickly and swiftly with the assignment bar at the bottom. You drag your minion from say, construction to engineering, and one of the minions in that category will automatically start working on the task that you assigned. It keeps the game really simple and is a very sleek and intuitive way of controlling the action.

To keep your base up and running, there are many things you need your minions to do, and the micromanaging really requires some thinking. There are 7 different rooms you can build on to your base, and 6 different tasks your minions can do. With all the different things your minions can be doing at one time, you need to be completely focused to play this game. It can be a little overwhelming at first, but there are small visual cues to help you know what is happening.

The building up of your base is an interesting part of the game too. To get your minions to build different sections of your base, you drag the room down from the top part of the screen, and if one of your minions is assigned to construction, he will start to build it. The shape of the rooms are designed like Tetris, and will give you a different shape every time. The placement of the rooms becomes ever more important, as you need to fit everything together. I like that, as it adds even more strategy to the game.

One of the main goals in the game is to research all 4 monoliths. You have to build up your base far enough to get to the area where they are, and once you are there, you need to assign some of your minions to research them. Once fully researched, they will give you a power-up for your minions. It could be anything from making your minions walk faster, or slowing down the waves of enemies that are a constant pest. I like the idea of getting the power-ups from these monoliths and having you expand to research them. It takes a good amount of planning to make sure you aren’t stretched too thin. Overall I think this is executed very well.

While your minions are building your base, there is one omnipresent enemy that always seems to be about to strike. There is a red bar at the bottom of the screen, and when it fills up, enemies start to attack. The only way to stop them is to build a defense room, and then when the enemies come, you need to assign minions to it so that you can fight back. The minions defend themselves fairly well, but when they are not in a defense room, you might as well say goodbye. The enemies are ruthless, and circle over them and constantly attack. This gets to be a major problem in the really late stages, as you are rushing to build up your base and research monoliths. There is little time between waves and it gives you basically no time to get anything done, and is a major difficulty spike that I hope will be fixed.

Finally, the art and the soundtrack, which are both excellent for this game. The art is a simple, minimalistic kind of style, and the soundtrack is subtle, but adds to the overall atmosphere to the game. I love how the game looks, and the game sounds amazing, especially with headphones.

Rymdkapsel is an great PSM game, and one you should definitely check out. With the Tetris building style and the focus more on building the base and expanding, Rymdkapsel really sets itself apart. Even though there are some massive difficulty spikes, the fun you have while building up your base heavily outweighs the small gripes I have with this game. You should definitely give Rymdkapsel a whirl.

A copy of this game was purchased for review purposes. For more info on our review policy click here. This review is for the PlayStation Vita version of the game.