I’ve been playing Crosstown for the better part of two months now. It’s created by the same guy who made one of my all time favourite Xbox Indie Games; In The Pit. Crosstown is a retro themed, charming and hard arcadey game and we were given a free copy for review thanks to the game’s developer.

You, humanoid, travel your way through 40 levels of Crosstown (the place). Each level has an assortment of enemies. Every few levels you are introduced to a new type inhabitant of Crosstown, slowly increasing the difficulty and complexity. Your goal in every level is always the same; collect four Qreds (multicoloured circle things) without being killed.

With a very Portal-esque sense of humour, Crosstown’s overlord PIGGY fills you in on the back-story as you go; you’re in Crosstown and have no memories. The story is about as deep as the 8-bit styled graphics, but for a light-hearted game the between-level screens of text do their job well.

8-Bit Brain overload

Crosstown is a bit like a very frantic firework display, and you’re some kind of bird. I was finding myself almost completely overwhelmed and unable to comprehend what was going on, especially towards the later levels. Not least because there are more types of enemies inhabiting the ever-changing maze-like environment than I care to remember, each with its own unique attributes.

Keeping track of what each enemy does is thankfully easy enough: even with a rudimentary number of pixels, each enemy looks like how it acts. Fast moving? Long legs. Explodes when shot? Looks like a bomb etc.

My trouble started when there were simply a lot of them inhabiting the maze. I soon found that trying to concentrate on everything that was happening was impossible, and I resorted to staring intently at the local area of the maze I was in. When you include enemies that shoot, the wrap-around effect where one side of the map loops to the opposite one (something you, enemies and bullets all take advantage of) and then a timer on every level, things soon get silly. Numerous times I died with no real idea where I was or what killed me. ‘œNwaaah!?’ or something similar, was a noise I murmured all too frequently when I could feel my brain straining to fit everything in.

It’s this incomprehensibly fast-moving and complex action that makes the game so hard. On more occasions that I would care to admit to I was killed by my own bullet hitting me from behind, or by an enemy above me shooting upwards. Frustrating; yes, but it’s not that random, meaning I found it hard to blame the game for my own incompetence.

The Bounceback is my enemy

What I can blame the game on though are some annoyingly unfair enemies. One, the Bounceback, made me rage-quit-sulk many times and it’s for one simple reason; the creature moves ‘œrandomly’. A Bounceback has a tough hide that reflects your bullet back at you. This would be fine, if the creature didn’t have the ability to turn its back on your instantly, and without warning. The ‘œrandom’ element to many of the creatures’ movement leads to unpredictable walking patterns, making those fast-moving enemies a right bitch.

The random movement of the creatures does admittedly add to the challenge, but it also adds one of my most hated elements to a game; a constant, random chance of unavoidable death. When you die (more on that later) because something random happened, it doesn’t feel like you have failed, but that the game has failed you for no good reason.

Still, it’s not game ruining; you have health. Well, you have any of the Qreds you have collected (collect all four to beat the level). Whenever you get hit you lose one which goes and randomly appears somewhere else in the map. When you’re all out of Qreds and you get shot, you die. Die three times and it’s game over, back to the start with you. Enjoyably, you can skip any level you’ve beaten without being killed once. So even terrible players like myself, with enough persistence, can make progress.

A few other points worth mentioning:

• To skip a level you have to press Y. I got stuck on (and never finished because it’s too hard – though I vow to keep trying) the final boss, meaning each retry needed 39 presses of the Y button.
• The game will happily spawn shooting enemies behind you.
• It has multiplayer, and as best I can tell it’s a versus kind of affair with you both/all competing to gather four Qreds fastest. The fact I struggled to cope with the normal levels meant adding more players was just crazy.
• If you get bored of the main campaign, there’s an infinite-play level.
• There’s a second ending if you complete all 40 levels in one go. I’m pretty sure nobody will ever see that ending.

An enjoyably basic and retro feeling game. The difficulty ramp is steep but steady and it can provide a challenge to any skill level. However, in a similar feeling to In The Pit, that game’s flaws could have been ironed out, if at the cost of a later release date and more play-testing. Whilst far from perfect it does feel enjoyable, (importantly) unique and generally rather good.

You should play this game if’¦

…you enjoy a challenge and good humour.

Final Score
A charming test in frustration management, this faux-8-bit maze adventure is well worth a try.

(What does this score mean?)