Sky Machine Review (Switch) | Nintendo Life

Heaven’s Machine is the first in the Super Rare Games ‘Super Rare Shorts’ series; The new standalone games are only released on Switch in physical form and are only available to purchase during a short open pre-order window. It’s certainly an unusual idea, but unfortunately this is probably not the start you were hoping for.

Heaven’s Machine is a controlled action roguelite with two joysticks full of weapons placed aboard a celestial train, so far, very promising. However, it will kill you very quickly if you try to play it as a controlled action roguelite with two joysticks full of weapons placed aboard a celestial train. Hurry with guns blazing and you’ll soon discover that due to the spread of bullets on the screen and often in tight areas, your short run is just as likely to get you into trouble as it is out of it. Taking a hit seems to offer no grace period: if four bullets overlap when they hit you, they hit you four times.

So since getting close or trying to dodge the bullets will likely kill you, the only alternative is to play the game as a cover shooter, ducking in and out from behind whatever random wall the last rectangular room has been decorated with. It’s a boring routine that soon reveals how simplistic and uniform the AI ​​is used by the game’s small group of enemies, as well as how similar the weapons feel to each other. The large multi-barreled bullet spitter is weightless and the shotgun has no kickback, so in practice the biggest difference between two pistols is whether you hold or press the shoulder button to fire.

The roguelite aspects of the game are similarly crude, the randomness feeling truly random rather than an unpredictable escalation of ever-changing events. We personally witnessed that the first room of the first stage contained something from zero to nineteen enemies, and each room in each stage after that had a similar number of random enemies, ranging from literally empty to overwhelming. Even on a roguelite, the difficulty should be modeled on a curve, not a jolt between two extremes.

A litany of small, unforced bugs complete a disappointing package. There is no way to pause the game without pressing the Home button on your Switch; Even if you are looking at the inventory screen and completely blind to the rest of the game, the enemies will keep moving to kill. Too long pickup animations make not only possible, but you probably won’t acquire your end-of-stage bonus items unless you stand still and wait for them to run instead of running out the front door. Upon death, you are immediately sent to the beginning of the first level without even an end-of-race stat screen between the two of you. If you delete the game, the only change is the appearance of a short and unsatisfactory credit sequence before returning to the title screen.

Basic stability is also not something to be taken for granted; the game crashed directly into us once while we were examining the inventory screen, and at other times the UI elements weren’t fixing themselves. Even just moving from one car to the next feels harsh, the screen visibly taking a moment to clear and then updating the layout as if you’ve caught the game before it’s ready.

As a short little experience, it’s not entirely without merit, but if you enjoy the slightly random action, the Switch already has items like Enter the Gungeon, Dead Cells, and Hades for you to play with. Sadly, Heaven’s Machine is best left behind for collectors to keep it sealed safely.