Koya Rift – Review

Overview

Koya Rift is a fast paced platform shooter that was independently developed by Code-Drama member Zach Kehs  who is often known around the Internet by his username, SunnyKatt. The music was composed by a friend and also another member of Code-Drama, Richard Thomas. Koya Rift  is a game that is focused highly around procedural generation and dynamically increasing difficulty with a smooth fast running gameplay with a high replay value and challenge.

Koya Rift Release Trailer

Story

Koya Rift severely lacks any true storyline to it, while yes there is a small back story written by Zach Kehs and a bit of story is shown during the loading screens. In a way this brings the game down a bit seeing as you ultimately have no true meaning to what you are doing in the game and in the campaign, but then making the game a fully fledged storyline based game doesn’t feel as if it would of been the right thing to add to the game without destroying some of the core elements of the game, including the procedural generating and the dynamic difficulty level that makes the game have its edge against other games of the same genre. While the lack of storyline shown in the game makes it sort of feel pointless at times, the game play makes up for it. The storyline and back story are good reads if you have the time or the bother to read them. For anyone interested we have included the basic outline of the story line that is present on Koya Rifts website here:

You play as a band of professional futuristic mercenaries on the search for planets to sell to governments for colonization.

The world is too overpopulated in this future and the short environmental tolerance of humans forced practically hospitable planets into a position of top marketable desire.

The mercenaries stumble upon the planet, claimed and named “Koya”, which is worth a fortune due to the gentleness of the natural environment (oxygen in the air, green plant life, bodies of water, proper planet mass for gravity).

They then discover what they will soon name the “Phantoms”. The Phantoms are hateful, vicious creatures that have formed out of the technology of an ancient race, and the hatred between themselves that had caused the demise of their race.

The Phantoms are incredibly adaptive – they quickly managed to assemble and combine energy weapons like the ones the mercenaries used to damage them onto their own soldiers and fight back. The mercenary company is running out of metal to form their own fighting droids (harvested from a nearby asteroid) and cannot afford to leave the planet to get help, for a rival company or government might discover the planet and claim the wealth for themselves.

Stubbornness and determination prevent them from leaving altogether.

They have not wasted this many resources to quit. Ally scientists were able to estimate that the enemy is originating from a point near the planet core they call “the Rift”.

Their mission is to completely exterminate this race, and that means sending their best to find and destroy the Rift. You play as a “Lancer” – an extremely expensive and advanced human-manned suit that has the ability to wield ”Lances” (very powerful and rare energy weapons from the ancient race on the planet) with stimulated telekinesis using the pilot’s brain.

These suits, each carrying a highly trained mercenary, are dropped onto the planet inside of an orb that is used by the soldier to order backup in the form of robotic droids.

Gameplay

Koya Rift features a fast action gameplay, which in one minute you can be dropping down a tunnel fighting a lite amount amount of enemies then the next turn you run into a purple shard that has enemies pouring out of it requiring you to change your tactics rapidly and in some cases attempting to dodge specific parts of the map and knocking out the lightly guarded shards to prevent yourself from being over swamped. What I love greatly about Koya Rift is its use of procedural generation, every map in Koya Rift is technically unique since its generated in the moment and is not a pre-made map, what adds even more to this feel is the dynamic difficulty, the better you do the harder the game gets imposing more of a challenge on the player without the game just becoming extremely easy. However there is one feature that I feel is a bit tacked on is the campaign, while it does add more gameplay value, there isn’t really that much truly to it,   it does offer the ability to slowly progress while upgrading your character, though in the end it sort of feels as if it all should of being built into the one whole thing, not separated off from the normal skirmish based gameplay. One thing I really hated while playing the game was how pressing “esc” quit out of the current match without any warning whats so ever, this led to me having to redo the last campaign mission several times when I was close to finishing. I personally felt this very irritating as I often go to press escape to pause the game. There is also small glitches with the friendly AI when it gets stuck on small bits and doesn’t end up following you and that difficulty doesn’t drop down the more games you lose.

Graphics

Koya Rift has a very stylized graphics courtesy of Zach Kehs himself, instead of putting time into pixel art or hiring an artist Zach chose to stick with what he knows best, Photoshop. All art in Koya Rift was created by Zach and you can tell from the style that is consistent throughout the game. The graphics in Koya Rift seems to rely heavily on special effects but it does come out  extremely well when it’s in action, everything seems rather seamless in appearance. The only thing I really have to complain about when it comes to graphics is that sometimes the black space around the tunnels sort of feels that it needs something here and there  just to add a little bit more to the feel of the game and the feel that your underground.

Sound

The sound and music used in the game are of a high quality and really fit the atmosphere of the game, the music was composed by a friend of Zach’s, Richard Thomas, he seems to of made some very good sounding and high quality atmospheric tracks for Koya Rift, however sadly the music is sort of a let down for Koya Rift  as it often ends up feeling irritating as after a while it starts to sound really, really repetitive despite the quality and the good sound that is present in the tracks.

Conclusion

This game despite some of its flaws (But hey? what game doesn’t have flaws) is a giant bargain for just a mere $7 USD, it is a game that you can play for a short few minutes and get a lot of fun and satisfaction out of. While it may not be a fully fledged game, it’s definitely a brilliant arcade game, I personally recommend anyone with the money to spare to buy  Koya Rift, and as I said, it’s an absolute bargain and Zach should be awarded for the amount of effort he put into this game.

To buy the game go to either, http://code-drama.com/koya-rift/ to buy it via BMT Micro (They support a lot of transaction types, or you are able to buy it through Desura you can get it at http://www.desura.com/games/koya-rift

Support the Indie scene, do not pirate this game!