Andro Dunos II Review

Space: the most explosive frontier?

Retro releases are ten-a-penny these days. But where such games really shine is when they haven’t been messed with too much, leaving them in their nostalgic, pixelated, synth-soundtrack glory. 

Andro Dunos, an arcade retro 2D bullet-hell game is one such gem, where its heart and mind are left completely intact. And boy, what a heart and mind!

Pixelated gold

There is plenty of vivid colour in Andro Dunos II, with its palette allowing the space-age vehicles to pop right off your display. All of the visual appeal has been retained from the original game, originally released in 1992.

Sprite work is top-notch and beautifully crafted, giving every enemy and the players shit loads of immersion. Visually, the bosses are a particular favourite, mammoth warships equipped with many weapons on several sections, built to annihilate anything that comes their way. 

Explosion effects, though basic, are spot on too, adding to the space-aged feel.

Loop da loop

Ando Dunos 2 offers classic, high stimulation arcade shooting with all the accoutrements. Continue screens are aplenty here, making the player really feel for a moment like they need to fumble with coins in a noisy arcade to be able to carry on playing.   

The bulk of the gameplay comes in the form of blasting the hell out of your enemies as your ship moves across the screen. After shooting different enemy ships of varying shapes, sizes, and types, there is a boss battle, from flying enemies to turrets. 

Boss battles are varied, including one that is fought in the water and one split into several medium-sized bosses, really ramping up the intensity. Attacks are varied too and change in stages as you whittle down each boss. 

“There is a steep learning curve in Andro Dunos II, with it feeling like the player’s ship moves a bit too slowly for purpose.”

Weapons for the player to use are varied and can be switched according to need. The weapons have drastically different purposes and accuracy levels. Some spread outward, with quick, weak attacks, great for crowd control and some are more accurate but slower. 

A combination of two of these should get most players through most situations and the level of player choice makes the game feel fresh and dynamic.

Upgrade points are earned throughout each level. These can be placed into different categories, such as different types of weapons, or shields. This is a great feature but be careful, because the more often the player dies, the more upgrades they lose. 

There is a steep learning curve in Andro Dunos II, with it feeling like the player’s ship moves a bit too slowly for purpose. Most players will die a lot early on until they get used to this. But in fact, the challenge of the difficulty of this kind of game is its strength, once players get accustomed. 

In space, nobody can hear you… hum the Andro Dunos 2 soundtrack

The musical score is exactly what you would expect for a retro 2D side-scrolling arcade shooter. 

Allister Brimble (Alien Breed, Body Blows, Projet-X) has created analogue sci-fi heaven here, with bleeps and bloops in all the right places, keeping a high tempo for the fast-paced gameplay. 

The score is catchy and most players will probably find themselves humming it long after their session has finished. 

Decent Dunos Duration

A decent amount of replayability is present within Andro Dunos 2. After the main campaign has been unlocked, there are different game modes, such as the mode where the player fights every boss in a row. This is not for the faint-hearted but does offer a great opportunity for replays. 

The game should take most players 2-3 hours to complete the main campaign and 3-5 hours including extra game modes. 

Explosive overwhelm

It is great to play a game where so much is happening at once. However, there needs to be some balance within the chaos. There are so many explosions and bullets simultaneously flying around the screen and everything is so brightly coloured, including the player’s ship, it is difficult to what the hell is going on some of the time. This leads to many unnecessary deaths. 

Similarly, the need to move around so much to dodge enemy projectiles makes it hard to tell which bullets are yours and which are from the enemy. This also makes it complicated and slightly frustrating when trying to evade attacks while launching offensive manoeuvres. 

For these reasons, Ando Dunos 2 would benefit from some slight, modern design tweaks to make it more playable and feel more balanced. 

Conclusion

At first, Andro Dunos 2 felt like any other retro side-scrolling bullet-hell game and this didn’t change by the time the end credits rolled. 

Around the time this game was originally made, in the early nineties, many games had loads of passion put into them. Explosions, varying game dynamics, animations and the musical score are all way over the top in Andro Dunos 2, as was common for the period. 

But this title does it all just as well as any other, and everything works in a coherent vision of explosive, pixelated nostalgia. 

It’s just a shame there is nothing to mark it out from the crowd. 

Andro Dunos II is available on Steam for PC.