Getting this headline brings a big smile to my face. I’ve actually been playing Earth Atlantis for the past week or so with the intent to review the game here on Marooners’ Rock. However, there were some glaring design flaws that halted my progress, and while I was completely ready to shred the game in that review, I could see some minor adjustments that could make it tons better.
While playing the base version of Earth Atlantis, I got stuck on an octopus boss that seemed impossible. After a couple hours, I finally submitted and put myself into easy mode, only to find out that the same boss continued to wall me off from the rest of the game. Getting to that boss took maybe a half an hour and I had no way to upgrade my ship to something more interesting to keep me playing.
This created a limbo-like loop of getting killed at that boss, respawning at the second checkpoint, and floundering around with tougher enemies with no upgrades. Those upgrades are similar to many shoot-em-up games, in that they are lost upon death. Many of those upgrades would spawn far away, leading to a lot of wandering only to get pulverized at the same boss blocking my path. It was definitely frustrating and I put it down.
However, this new patch from Headup Games might make reviewing Earth Atlantis much easier for me, while making it way more fun with players overall. Here’s what the patch adds:
- Drop the sub-weapon that you had equipped before you got defeated right at your restart point
- Item boxes spawn much closer to the restart point and player’s location
- Increased drop rates of items and sub-weapons
- Increased the player’s ship speed
- Reduced the difficulty of some boss monsters, especially on Easy Mode
- Minor bugs fixed
- A new game icon
Easy Mode might actually be doable now and items spawning away from the starting point is getting fixed. I was sad initially; the game’s art style is cool enough to pull me in, but I couldn’t get behind the gameplay. We shall see if these fixes makes the game more approachable, so keep an eye out for my full review.
For more information about Earth Atlantis, check out the official Nintendo listing.
