Written by James Nicolay
Title: Lichtspeer: Double Speer Edition
Developer: Lichthund
Publisher: Crunching Koalas
Genre: Action Adventure, Arcade
Price: $14.99
Also Available On: PSV, Steam, PS4
From the name of the game itself, you will know that the developers are trying to lure you with some wunderbar German shtick to distract you from the simple gameplay. Lichtspeer seems like Angry Birds peppered with adult, geeky German humor, yet it’s easy to pick up and play. While the game entertains in the first few minutes, the challenge ramps up too immediately—achtung! You will die a lot.
In the game, you control a hero (or heroine) gifted by a bored god with the Lichtspeer (German word play for light and spear, I think). The gameplay mechanic is simple: it’s trajectory javelin throw. In a flat level platform, you are at the left part of the stage (for most of the game levels—sometimes the platform becomes inclined), and the various enemies march to your direction. You defeat them by controlling the projectile of the spear with your L stick, then you fire with either the ZR or A button. Eventually you unlock (or purchase further abilities with your points called LSD (naturally, it’s Licht Standard Denomination—lol), and these become crucial in defeating the game as some abilities multiply your spears as they fall, give you a temporary shield, or even skewer your enemies with laser spears. The challenge, though, is that these abilities have lengthy cool-down periods, which add further strategy to the game.
The art design of the stages and the enemies look pretty and odd. In the early stages, the attackers are simple zombie-like characters, but eventually, running zombies, giants, shielded soldiers, flying dogs, bombing walruses, jumping piranhas, weird creatures carrying bombs, and many other quirky creatures march, run, fly, jump to your direction and you have to correctly aim your Lichtspeer to defeat them. Some of them can be defeated with hit on any body part, a few can only be defeated with head shots—making every aim you make crucial to defeating each level. The game also amps the difficulty by giving you penalty every time you miss your target three times in a row. The god will scream NEIN! and you will be frozen momentarily. If enemies reach you, they will maim, behead, dig up your entrails, cut your body into half, electrocute you, etc. It’s fun.
I really enjoyed the boss levels—they’re ridiculously hard, but defeating them feels rewarding. If they’re still not too difficult for a player looking for more challenge, there’s a Rage-Quit mode that eliminates the checkpoints in the game.
Admittedly, the game can feel a bit brainless and repetitive, but the challenge alone is enough for the player to go through the game—and, of course, the wicked humor is spot on.
While there are only 13 levels to be unlocked, the game could take at least three hours to finish, mostly because you will definitely die a lot in the game. But the customizable ability of your Lichtspeer makes a second playthrough interesting enough.
Lichtspeer is a good distraction from playing AAA games. There were times when I felt that the game would work well if ported to iOS as touchscreen I think will be enough to make it work and interesting. Though I still applaud the developers for making the game still amusing, pretty, quirky, and fun.
RATING: 3.5/5
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