Drifting Lands

Who knew that a shmup built with action RPG elements would be the best thing since sliced bread?

Drifting Lands is a hybrid of sidescrolling shoot-em-up action, roguelite mechanics, and ARPG looting. It’s basically everything I’ve ever wanted in a game around this very affordable price range, and I’m happy to say that Alkemi hasn’t let me down in the slightest.

Despite its story being a bit of a bore, on the whole, Drifting Lands is a great game. It has beautiful visuals and a wonderful soundtrack, performance is solid, and while the gameplay always runs the risk of becoming repetitive, the strive to develop and improve your hangar of ships means it rarely does. Drifting Lands takes two fantastic genres and marries the best aspects of them together with flair, creating an original and massively addictive experience that deserves to be on your radar.

If you have been a long time fan of the SHMUP genre and want a fresh take on it, “Drifting Lands” is worth picking up on Steam. With the blend of RPG and story elements, it is a nice refreshing take on the genre. However, with lackluster story delivery, some repetitive level design and somewhat slow movement might be a turnoff for others. “Drifting Lands” is a well-balanced SHMUPRPG that brings something new to the table.

I’d lie if I said I didn’t enjoy most of my time with Drifting Lands. Smooth controls (provided you use a gamepad), a great soundtrack and a good amount of skills allow for experimenting with different builds. As long as you’re still encountering new foe types and patterns, it’s great fun. However, it does have a tendency to become a little stale much too soon, or so it did for me. I could see myself going back for shorter sessions, every now and then, simply because its mixture of shoot ‘em up and aRPG is done in a pretty neat fashion. It, however, clearly lacks compelling enough loot and is ...

Welcome to the remnants of humanity who are scattered and fighting for their lives against totalitarian corporations hoarding resources. Enter the Ark and join the fight in this hybrid SHMUP, RPG. You will need to gather both your psyche and your reflexes for this expedition. Brace yourself to battle through droves of hostiles while building up your ship between missions to reclaim your home in the unique Indie title Drifting Lands.

Sadly, a rather major flaw in Drifting Lands’ level design really brings down a game that is mostly well crafted. Looting has all the well-thought out tropes that similar games have in spades. It’s just a shame that each level is essentially a miniature horde mode rather than featuring proper level design, and that the number of levels could have been cut drastically to make for a more coherent experience. These hang-ups sadly prevent me from recommending Drifting Lands for diehard fans of the genre, but it’s otherwise an alright effort.

Established in 2009, developer Alkemi began developing a puzzle shooting game which saw conflict arise and a legal battle take place delaying their project for 4 years. The birth of Drifting Lands was partly the re-branding of their previous game and the re-engineering of game mechanics into a puzzle filled space battle, with loot!  While the game has similarities to Diablo, I would refer to it more as a cool and challenging version of Galaga with an loot hunting component.