Disclaimer: This preview is based on the short (sadly) Press Demo.

 

Rise and shine is a side-scrolling shooter, with a nice comic art style and old school difficulty. The game is made by Super Mega Team and published by Adult Swim Game, the game tells the story of Rise, a kid that finds himself in a middle of a war zone, when his home planet of Gamearth (home of the "classic" video games) is attacked by the constantly grinning their teeth meat heads of the planet Nextgen. Now Rise has to get to the king, and give him the legendary talking gun Shine so you can repel the evil. Now personally I don’t like this type of story/writing, the idea of "Classic games are good and Nextgen games are evil" has been done by "gag a day" comic makers, animators and so on. Plus there is a bid of dissonance between world and writing in this game. The writing is very "Lets poke fun at the tropes of games" while in the background you can see the corpses of classic/obscure video game characters! I feel like they should have gone with a bit more serious writing, if they are going to stay with the imagery they are using.

 

The music and sound design is good, not too brilliant, but good.

The look of the game is great, a little bit too much. The whole world is crafted in this comic book style, with everything popping with bright colors. The closest thing i could compare is Awesomenauts. I am that much of an expert on the style, all i know is that i love it. There is a certain spark in this art that gets to me, and is one of the reason why i kept going after every death. And oh boy, speaking of deaths.

 

Now while the games seems like a run and gun, the game is actually best played slowly. Rise can run, jump, double jump, dash, take cover/open chests, shoot, reload and change ammo/shot type. Oh and one other important thing that you need to do-aim. Yes, in order to fire in this game, you have to take aim, which at the same time kills your speed by making you character stop in place, and keeps you on your toes, since you need to constantly stop aiming to dodge projectiles. At first it was a pain, but in a very short time i find myself getting used to the flow of it and having fun with it. Other than that you will be getting different ammo types and shot type. In this demo i got basic bullets, basic shots, electric bullets that are good against robots and guided shots that can lead to neat puzzle moments. Now other mechanics that i have to mention is something I don’t like in regards more in the writing rather than the gameplay. You have a cover and regenerating heath mechanic, which last i check, that a staple of the Nextgen-ers. Not that will do you any good, cover is easily destroyed and you often die in one/two shots anyway. That is probably the last and most important element of the game is the fact that it is hard. Really hard. Aiming is a bit hard since it’s so precise (no matter if you are using a mouse or a joystick) and even there are some puzzle moments where you could get blown up if you are not quick enough. I must admit, in this short demo i have died at least over 30 times and even had a guided bullet puzzle where i lost at least 20 minutes of trials and error, in the end, i never gave up. I wanted to keep going and going, and i feel other people will too. Trial and error, muscle memory and stubbornness are key to win this game.

 

In the end, after all of my dislike of the story and the death after death i have had, i found myself very much liking the game. I wish that the demo i got was longer, since i wanted to play more of it. One last complaint- i hope that the release version of this game, there is a better keyboard and mouse mapping! SERIOUSLY! I never found the dash button on the keyboard which would make it harder, but at least aiming with the mouse is better than a joystick i found. Other than that, this is a good video game.