Title: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime
Developer: Asteroid Base
Publisher: Asteroid Base
Platform: Xbox One (also for PC, Playstation 4, and Nintendo Switch)
Category: Action, Platform, Shooter
Release Date: September 9, 2015 (Xbox One)
How we got the game: We borrowed it from a friend
We were thrown into this game by a good friend when we were hanging out at his house with another friend. The opening story made us chuckle with how corny and cute it was. It’s bunnies! In space! With the power of love!
When our friend turned on the game and said, “We’re going to play Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime,” we just looked at him blankly. But this game is too cute and fun to ignore.
This is a cooperative space shooter and is best played with friends. Up to four players man a spaceship, taking control of its engine, shield, and guns, as they explore parts of space in search of their friends. The controls are simple enough, with your little character sitting at one of the stations and pressing the appropriate button to control said station.
You can move about the ship freely (depending on the kind of ship you have – you can upgrade them) to take turns controlling the ship or shield or running back and forth between the guns. As you explore space, you can collect power-ups for the guns, engine, and shield allowing your ship to be more powerful against the various enemies that come your way.
There were three kinds of power-ups — a Beam Gem, a Metal Gem, and an aptly-named Power Gem. You can mix and match the types of gems on the ship’s stations for different attacks. For instance, equipping the shields with a Power Gem will make them bigger, and if you add a Metal Gem to the mix, the shields will have spikes to injure any enemy unfortunate enough to knock into them.
We personally liked the metal gems the best. The guns turned into spiked ball and chains. They were hard to control, but a lot of a run and had a good reach. Each level contained 10 animals that needed to be rescued, but you only need to rescue 5 in order to continue on. However, the more you rescue, the faster you’re able to upgrade your ship and such.
Each level consisted of four areas before we were to defeat a boss. Considering how difficult and chaotic (especially with our group of friends!) a boss battle could be, upgrading the ship was definitely useful.
It’s a satisfying game to play through though. Each levels consists of four areas before the boss allowing a good amount of time for you to get upgrades.
The graphics are ridiculously charming, with the main characters being little aliens in spacesuits and their friends being bunnies, frogs, and foxes, to name a few species. The colors are vivid, with the spaceship and enemies being bright against the backgrounds to help navigate around the worlds.
This is the definition of an adorable cartoon. I love the various levels as the space change. There can be water bubbles as well as ice and wind which certainly makes it a challenge to defeat certain enemies or even reach your friends.
The music was fairly subtle, having a good beat to match the exploration of the levels. Of course, there was plenty of communication between us players masking the music as we were dashing around, a couple of us trying to handle multiple gun stations or pausing a moment to check the map.
The sound effects were enjoyable as well. I liked the sound of the shooting and also the small animals would “talk” or yell for help the closer we got to them. Their voices were very cute.
The story is explained in a goofy way. There are “super smart” scientists in space far away and have built a machine to harness love. An error has occurred in the XOXO matrix and has allowed anti-love to slip through. Using our last ship, we must go out into space and save our friends as well as the universe.
Saving our friends — all adorable animals — enabled them to use the power of love to unlock the heart-shaped portal that leads to the next level. It’s corny but it definitely works for this kind of game.
The more animals you save, the better the world will be. At least, that’s the moral I’m getting from the story.
This was a great game to play with friends, with plenty of different stations that you can switch and play around with, along with different spaceships to challenge yourselves in controlling. It doesn’t seem like the best game to play solo, but I will confess I have yet to try it by myself. It is a game I’d play again with others.
After playing this game with Kris and our two friends, I immediately knew this was a game I would love to play with our two cousins. I’m looking forward to playing it again.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime gets…
4 out of 5 lives.
I think this is very entertaining. A 3D cartoonist type of game. This one is best for my lil sis and her friends. Great review.
Thank you. It’s certainly a fun game with the right group of people.
This is great fun with a group (or even just a pair) but is pretty weak in single player. The AI companion is fine, but it’s just nowhere near as much fun.
We haven’t tried the single player mode, to be honest. I can’t imagine it being much fun. Similar to Overcooked, actually. You just need a group or else the game is lacking. Except in Overcooked, as the single player, you switch off between playing two characters… which, I guess, ups the difficulty.