Review: Aqua Kitty Steam Edition

Aqua Kitty is a fast paced retro styled submarine arcade shooter with optional 2 players local Co-op. Blast through hordes of mechanical sea monsters in your kitty sub and defend the deep sea milk mining kittens! THE MILK MUST FLOW! Originally starting out as a PSM game, Tikipod decided to bring the game to Steam. Let’s see how it fared.

Pros:

• Graphics have had a lick of HD paint and the result, It looks really good with some excellent backdrops with lighting effects helping to make the game look a visual treat.
• Supports gamepads and keyboards.
• Online leaderboards for each level and can be filtered down to friends only leaderboards.
• Offline co-op is available and players can use a pad and keyboard or two pads at the same time.
• Autosave upon level completion.
• Three different difficulty sections. Easy and normal are basically the same. Enemies are not as tough or frequent. Upgrades are automatic whereas Arcade mode, is a more hardcore mode. Having just one life and more enemies, players will have to upgrade their ship themselves. Its easily done and can be done on the fly with X and Y used to instantly upgrade your ship parts.
• The game revolves around you protecting the kitten miners as they mine milk. Fish and all manners of aquarium life will attempt to stop them. You must get in your sub and shoot them out.
• Has a strong Defender them about it. Rightly so as it has the same Defender style minimap at the top which will show enemies, and miners. It will flash red when a miner is being kidnapped/attacked. It is a 2D side-scroller shooter where the level loops round on itself. You can flip the ship around whenever you want with the bumper buttons.
• You can chain kills together to rack up high scores.
• Excellent retro style soundtrack.
• Has Steam achievements and trading cards if that’s your bag.
• Complete a level will tick the box for it. Save all the miners and the block turns to gold.
• The levels are represented as blocks on a big world map. This allows you to pick your own route and replay any level.
• The menu system is fluid, all options are only a quick button press away and it’s really quick to jump into a game and know whats up.
• Power-ups will appear in the game and offer much-needed support. They are your typical ones like a big bomb or extra ships fight by your side for a limited time.
• Huge variety of enemies with all different attack patterns and speed. A few mini-bosses are scattered around the world with one big proper boss fight at the end.
• Endless mode is available where the name of the game is to kill as many enemies with one life as possible. You do not have any miners to worry about so go for it.

Cons:

• A slow starter as your ship is slow and all enemies are slow and docile.
• No online co-op which would have been nice.
• The modes don’t have huge differences and in short, only two modes are really needed.
• A brief explanation of the different difficulties would be good for new players.
• No key mapping available as yet.
• If you don’t like kittens then this game is not for you.
• If you hate milk and want to see it wiped out, trying to protect kittens who want to bring more into the world may not sit well with you.

In Summary, The jump from PSM to Steam is a successful one.  Offering players better graphics, higher quality soundtrack, and offline co-op, the game builds on the older game. Any adjustments or fixes that people want are defiantly more a nice to have than a must have. Tikipod has again delivered a fun 2D scroller that can scratch a retro shooter itch and also keep shooter fans happy. The game offers many hours of fun, endless mode is perfect for leaderboard chasers and friendly competition.  A worthy purchase.