Straimium Immortaly | Space Ninjas Fighting Tha Queeni & Her Nasties

If "The Binding of Isaac" were warped six ways from Sunday, and thrown into the void of space in the presence of a crude alien narrator with worms gouging out it's eye sockets then "Stramium Immortaly" would be that experience. It's oddities, and innuendos know no Earthly bounds, and the stuff you'll encounter as a Straima Ninja is not something easily rationalized. Amid the grotesque alien world, and it's biologically diverse ecosystem you'll be tasked with engaging a randomized room to room hunt for loot, keys, and the final boss. It is a trek with numerous secrets to uncover, and mysteries to reveal. Much like Isaac's battle through his Mother's dungeon basement you will travel room by room dealing with deadly enemies of varying types as you find weapon upgrades, and abilities to see you through to the end. It is by no means an easy undertaking even with the modifiers you can unlock to cheat the system. Nor is it made any easier with the seed keys that can be generated for map replay.

In "Straimium Immortaly" you play as a Straima Ninja. An intergalactic warrior of sorts meant to fight the Queeni and her invading nasties in Cubicus Crawls. As the ninja you fly around in the rooms you enter via tubes and portals shooting both basic, and special mana dependent shots. Along with your base attacks you have a speedy dash for dodging, and a special ability that will effect the in-game environments as well as gameplay. With the tools at hand, the mini-map display, and blind guess as to which room will lead you on a safer path to the end you will face the enemies and hazards before you. Each encounter being rated by room via a skull difficulty counter that ranges from one skull to five with five being the most difficult challenge you will face. Needless to say the challenge will change according to which path you take, and not all rooms have to be entered to complete a playthrough. For those of you worried about getting a proper handle before diving in there is a hands-on training tutorial to help you better understand what it is you are getting into. You can also remap the controls at the main menu for an easier layout making the fight at hand more like a shump experience or the intended platforming metroidvania experience.

When it comes to modes the main mode in Straimium Immortaly which is called "Cubicus Crawl" is where you'll enter the randomly generated set of rooms after having chosen your initial setup options. You can tweak the size of the map you'll playthrough, generate a seed code for replay, add modifiers that include cosmetic hats, gameplay altering options, and cheats as well as the option to begin. When you enter you'll be presented with randomized rooms connected by pipes, and portals that house enemies, hazards, upgrade biomes, and other task oriented areas of interest that are each rated according to difficulty. Among the enemies and hazards you'll face you'll also find item vendors, and interactive background features that will change how the current playthrough plays out. No one playthrough is like another even though the enemies will be of the same variety to some extent. In the way of loot you'll find power-ups, weapon upgrades, mana and health refills as well as pink blobs that you can kill for currency.

Along with the main mode of play comes the "Boss Rushy" mode which is unlocked through main mode completion. A task not easily accomplished. This particular mode is self-explanatory, and will basically have you fighting all of the game's bosses in a series of boss only battles. It is a true test of skill as life is easily lost, and mana not so easily regained. Aside from this mode there seems to be two extra modes of play that can be unlocked as well. As of the time of this review I struggled to complete the game to a point to unlock said modes, but I do know they are there as there are place markers in the main menu for them. It's something extra to look forward to if you buy into "Stramium Immortaly".

In the way of bonus material the game does house a main menu "Compendium" where you'll find a long list of  behind-the-scenes features that are collected for your later browsing. This includes your in-game statistics among other things. Things like bosses beat, deaths, speedrun accomplishments, and other such tallies of merit or the lack thereof are on display as player stats. There also exists a region based bestiary housing images, and textual details regarding the game's otherworldly inhabitants. These displayed creatures range from the lesser enemies to the bosses, and even the living environmental hazards. There's that, and an item collection housing all of the items you've encountered. Everything from refills to power-ups, hats, weapons, and modifiers. When it comes to game effecting bonuses you can turn on the previously mentioned modifiers, and stack them for each playthrough. This, as I've said, includes cosmetics, gameplay altering bonuses, and outright cheats.

For those of you looking for gameplay tweaks there are a notable handful of options made available. In the visual category you can change to a CRT filter, a grunge filter, smooth lines filter, and even a no background filter. This alters how the game looks as you play it. You can even add in the mini-map onscreen, and turn on or off the narrator/info text should you see fit to do so. According to gameplay options you can remap controls assigning buttons to the forced basic & special shot as well as the right thumbstick twin stick shooter option. This feature, in particular, helps tremendously as the intended experience is not dependable at all. Facing left, and right manually with the DPad directions is problematic with the original settings intact. Other than that you have various volume settings for changing as well.

The Verdict ...

This tough as nails inspired randomly generated dungeon crawler is one that takes the genre to a new place entirely. A seriously screwy place. It presents the base formula in a 2D platforming way while adding in gameplay akin to a shoot 'em up. It features trippy visuals of an otherworldly type, and for what it's worth it is interesting enough to draw the player back in. It definitely drew me back in. The added replay value is basically infinite, especially in the main mode of play, and as such will give the player their money's worth, and then some. My only complaint, if any, is that the original control setup makes things artificially difficult. Thankfully this becomes a non-issue when you change the custom control settings. I suggest ganging the forced basic & special shot directions to the shoulder buttons. Assign the basics to L1 and R1, and the the special shots to L2 and R2. This helps tremendously. As far as verdict goes this game gets my seal of approval. Though it is very challenging the difficulty cannot be held against it as the more difficult scenarios are optional path choices, are rated accordingly, and can be dealt with if you go along a path that best prepares you for the fight at hand. This is where the seed code comes in handy.