HYPERSLICE

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Ten years ago, there came a game that made me lose four kilograms of weight, helped me develop a powerful grip, and pushed my Switch stress test to the limit. The game? THUMPER. It was a psychedelic, rhythm-based, brutal game, made to test your reaction time and pump your veins with a buzz of adrenaline. After sessions lasting maybe half an hour each I had sweat rolling down my neck, painful twitches in my arms... It was a workout, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

Ten years have passed, and I am older now. My rotting carcass is no longer as nimble as it was before. I have to accept the brutal truth - twitch gaming is no longer something I can do without suffering. And yet... There is always this little voice inside me, this shady whispering core that tells me, "Hey, dude, you can still do it. Remember how 20 years ago you've been so good at promode Quake 3?". And so I fall victim to my own hubris, picking up another game that is all about being this high-octane rush, a game made for younger bodies and sharper minds. HYPERSLICE is yet another foray into trying to check how well I can manage with games that toss everything at me in nanoseconds.

HYPERSLICE has a simple, abstract premise. It's not a game about a rich story and complex characters. You're a spacecraft. There is a horde of enemies. Everything is cast in simple geometric shapes. You have no weapons, so to speak - in fact, your body is your weapon, as you toss your craft in a blink of hyperspeed to slice through enemies, cutting them into bits. You can also power up your shield and bounce into them instead, tossing them around with high velocity. This is crucial for bumping shielded goons or for stunning bigger threats. That's pretty much your whole baseline arsenal - bump and slice, until it is done.

Trust me, this is still perfectly readable! Also not even close to the real chaos that can happen.

I think that what you should take from this humble review attempt is that HYPERSLICE is utterly relentless. There is not a moment to breathe. Blink, and you're done. Arenas? Tight, cramped, with nowhere to run. Enemies? Rapid and with single-minded hostility. Spawn rates? Insane and cruel. You've just blasted a wave? Well good, half a second later you get another one. Also, a giant mine drops from the sky. And maybe a spiky meteor, too. And oops, just spawned a golden multi-damage shield generator that makes the squadron of darting fliers immune to your slice dash. Bummer, bro, git gud. The constant dance of hyperactivity is dizzying, but - and this demands a big applause to the developer - never confusing.

Everything is crystal clear, curated to the most minute detail to make sure you know what is going on. Simple shapes, strong colours, it is all to serve a purpose - give you that much-needed clarity to make those split-second decisions. There is still a bit of a learning curve here. As the enemies change colour, indicating their overall durability, you need to record deep in your noggin how many slices through they'll need to be cut to pieces. Otherwise, it's all about the ballet of speed and destruction. Bounce this, watch it shatter over its friends. Slice through a beefy strafer. Instantly shift backward to combo-slice through a squad of tiny crafts trying to chase you down. Turn and bounce a laser cannon so it doesn't shave your hit points away.

It's visceral, it's stressful, and it feels amazing.

It helps that the user interface and the experience provided are all so sharp. Easy to understand, instinctive to grasp, and all made to fit the game's sharp, angular style. As a good roguelike, it also has a dense metaprogression, which is a little different from the usual 'unlock stuff as you go'. You need to bank your shards here and there to get them to your starting screen and then purchase new abilities and kit bits to crack open with your signature move. It's a nice little touch to make it feel a bit more rewarding, a bit more organic.

I do like that the UI options are also just bits you need to slice through to pick'em up.

And as every good roguelike, you need to have build options. You might be asking, how are builds even possible if, technically speaking, you have only two attack options to begin with? Well, that is a good point, but hear me out. The variety of abilities here to unlock is all about modifying the baseline behaviours of your two moves. You can make your bumping much more potent. Debuffing enemies, making them hit harder, shatter on impact. You can make your slices longer, hit harder, be thicker.

Plenty of abilities can create chain reactions and combos, too. Bouncing enemies damages them, then they can damage everything they bounce into, those enmies send flying will also get hit on collision... And suddenly you have a set of abilities that let you bump once into a throng of enemies and see them all explode upon each other. It's doable, but the upgrades here are not really made to create self-winning death engines. The game focuses on hard skill too hard to make such combos easy to obtain or too powerful in execution. No matter what kind of abilities you'll get and unlock, you will still be asked to be fast, reactive and to read the ever-shifting combat scenarios on the fly.

HYPERSLICE is a shot of double espresso mixed with Red Bull and a dash of ginger extract. It will test your patience; it will push your skills to the limit. It even understands that each death needs to restart to a new run almost instantly, and yeah, that is very much an option. Try and try again until you hone your speed, until your eyes flicker at inhuman speeds to track what the heck is going on. If high skill expression and combat scenarios that last mere seconds are what you're looking for, you won't be disappointed. Get on the game and start slicing it up.