*Featured Find* Effusion Review: Survive the Cosmic Onslaught

It's been a busy week in my world. Unfortunately events in life distracted me away from Pixel-Freak so I was unable to feed in the normal amount of content last week. That being said I still had an opportunity to play a really good find that was sent to me by the game's developer, Skiphs. Effusion is a cosmic survival shooter type game that despite feeling a little unfinished, is a very smooth experience.

In Effusion you play as a sentient cosmic entity that is surrounded by six gun barriers which swirl around you. Various attacking entities approach from all angles and need to be destroyed before they reach you. In the event you are struck your barrier/turret that is hit will be destroyed or if your center is hit you will be defeated. Along the way you also pick up green nodes which act as power-ups of various types (invincibility, attack speed increase, bombs, etc.) Beware though, you can accidentally destroy these helpful nodes.

One of the better mechanics of Effusion is the ability to customize your guns between rounds. To start you are only given a single gun type, but after completing each of the five sets of levels (20 levels total) you are awarded with a couple new types of projectiles. By entering the "Shop" (which does not contain any in-app purchase items, despite the name) you can equip the newly available guns to any of your six available gun slots. This allows the player to highly customize the offensive position with a mix of lasers, pulse cannons, and bombs to be more effective in each level.

The audio and visual display presented by the game are also a particularly awesome. The graphics, looking similar to something you'd find in Osmos, are impressive for such an indie game (possibly a one man team?). There are numerous enemy types all with unique appearances. Though the game currently lacks sound effects, which is probably my only major con, the music is fitting and truly amazing. There is an abundance of various tracks included ranging from somewhat soothing trance melodies to high paced, adrenaline beckoning, techno beats. Effusion is no slouch in the eye and ear department, despite the null valued sound effects.

Effusion gets a confident recommendation, not only for the great game that it is today, but also because the developer seems determined to make it a better game. Who knows what's in store for it in the future, but as of today the asking price of $.99 is a steal for a game this fun.