Straimium Immortaly, from Caiysware and Digerati, is the game that you can’t say or explain. Not only is it a weird tongue twister, but the game itself is so odd and unique as to nearly defy description. While the basics of Straimium are somewhat straightforward, the game itself has an incredibly unique feel that’s difficult to pin down.
In Straimium Immortaly, you’re a human (I think) interloper with a jetpack and some weaponry, encroaching upon the domain of Queenie, the Empress of the Cubicus. Don’t worry, none of that really matters. What does matter is that you’re a lone man against a giant, randomly generated cube of rooms filled with vicious enemies, weird creatures, and the occasional alien selling power-ups. Straimium is, at its heart, a rogue-like action game. It’s vaguely shmup-like, but not enough to entice real shmup fans, and it’s not exactly a platformer either. In fact, more than anything, it’s kind of like a rogue-like H.E.R.O. on acid, if that makes any kind of sense.
In the main portion of the game, once you select your dungeon size, character class (once you’ve unlocked them), and game mutators (modifiers to alter gameplay that you also unlock), you are simply thrown into a huge cube and it’s time to kill everything that moves. Every playthrough is different with rooms, enemies, and bosses reconfiguring. As you slowly work your way from room to room, you’ll die a lot. There’s really no way around it, as Straimium Immortaly is one of the least forgiving rogue-likes in a long time. Often, you’ll only make a room or two before being gunned down or slaughtered and it takes hours of play to really get a solid feel for the rather floaty controls. Your main gun is inaccurate at first, and you run out of laser bursts incredibly fast. Basically you need to make it a ways, find some powerups, die, and start over with new game mutators active. Eventually you’ll fight and beat some major bosses and end up unlocking Boss Rush Mode, which is even harder, of course.
In case you haven’t noticed by now, Straimium is quite bold visually, both in terms of character design and color. Enemies are weird, wonderful, and unexpected. Each room is a surprise, with statues, warps, monsters, waterfalls, and other odd and undefinable things. The game is so colorful in fact, that it’s hard to tell the background from the enemies sometimes, although a lot of them tend to be red, which helps a bit. Pretty much all the dialogue is meaningless and bizarre, but it does add a certain flavor. In terms of control, Straimium seems to mirror it’s graphic design, with bold but questionable choices.
By the time you get the knack for Straimium and manage to survive long enough, you’ll find that your dash escape is incredibly useful, if hard to master. You will also absolutely hate the fact that if you don’t let go of and re-press the main fire button when you change directions, you continue to fire in the same direction and keep getting shot because gameplay is too frantic. There’s a lot to dislike about Straimium, partly due to the odd, minimalist graphics, partly due to the imprecise physics, and partly simply because it’s so weird that it’s virtually unintelligible in parts. But those weaknesses also make the game compelling because you simply want to see what the heck is next! More than a few times, I powered up and suddenly had an incredible run through a level and felt quite satisfied, just by managing to find the right gun.
That’s the overall downside of Straimium Immortaly though. It’s a rather unbalanced game. Unlike a clean rogue-like experience such as Dead Cells or Rogue Legacy, Straimium never really manages to find its footing. It feels rough, odd, and partly unfinished. A lot of this is intentional in terms of game design, but it still comes out at the end feeling like an underwhelming experience. Over the course of multiple runs through different Cubicus levels, I vacillated wildly between having fun and dragging myself from room to room, waiting for something neat. Often, I died before anything good happened though. Only maybe one in ten runs felt solid and put together enough to really seem worth playing. And if you’re really hardcore, eventually you’ll unlock the Cubos Incursion where you play through multiple Cubicus levels to purge the Queenie’s threat from the universe!
Straimium Immortaly is a unique game that crosses genres and is weird and surprising, but it’s also not nearly as fun as it could be and the design choices made in the game for seemingly artistic reasons seem to affect the game’s entertainment value and playability. It’s a game that could be very good with a few tweaks but as it stands, just ends up mediocre. If you have the tenacity to stick with it, you can really get some solid gameplay out of this one, but the average gamer is likely going to be disappointed and end up moving on after only a few hours with Stramium Immortaly. This is definitely a game for the hardcore rogue-like fan and not too many other audiences, and the weirdness can either be endearing or a major turn-off depending on the player. At $12, Straimium won’t break the bank and there’s plenty of gameplay inside to keep you going for weeks, but it’s a noticeably niche title that won’t appeal to most gamers.
This review is based on a digital copy of Straimium Immortaly provided by the publisher. It was played in a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked mode and played equally oddly on both. Straimium Immortaly is also available on Steam, PS4, and Xbox One. Just try to avoid the psychedelics while playing if you don’t want to slide right down the rabbit hole…