After Wave: Downfall review

Inspired by the Greats

Sometimes, you just need to turn your brain off. Flopping down on the couch, opening your phone, and telling yourself you're going to flick through TikTok for 10 minutes before you start making dinner is probably a fairly common occurrence among most millennial adults. Even more common is not realizing that the ten minutes you allotted have magically turned into several hours.

When something allows you to somehow simultaneously zone out while also stimulating your brain, it can be dangerous for your free time. This was basically my experience with After Wave: Downfall, the latest indie title from 7 Raven Studios. Will After Wave take over my TikTok time? Is it more than meets the eye? Did I skip dinner more than once while I was playing it? Let's find out in this review of After Wave: Downfall on Xbox Series X.

After Wave: Downfall is an arcade shoot 'em up that takes plenty of inspiration from the classic arcade games of the past. Think Space Invaders, Galaga, and even Centipede. Your character occupies the lower half of the screen, enemies approach from the upper half, and you spend your time playing the game dodging and weaving between enemies and projectiles while dishing out some of your own.

What makes After Wave different from the games that inspired it, and part of what likely contributes to the trance-like state it induces is its colorful, full 3D presentation. Everything from the characters to the environments absolutely pop with color, and the sheer number of projectiles often mesmerized me with their myriad shapes and patterns, hypnotizing me into a fugue state of classic arcade nostalgia.

"Built Different"

Players take control of whimsical tank/boat hybrids which are each affixed with a primary weapon, two secondary weapons, and a screen-clearing "smart bomb" attack. There are six vehicles, each with its own character and primary weapon, and I found that some were clearly better than the others.

I believe the intention was to have a different style of attack for each character to suit different playstyles, but the end result is one where there are some characters that aren't even worth trying in the context of the challenge After Wave throws at you almost immediately. Tana's widespread flamethrower and powerful fireball attack are perfect for wiping out enemies in a cone in front of you, and Edward's tracking missile attack can curve to hit enemies so you aren't directly in their line of fire.

In contrast, Conall's machine gun fires in a thin, straight line, and his slow-moving torpedoes aren't nearly as helpful as either of the other character's secondary fires. The game is definitely still fun regardless of the character you choose, but better balancing of abilities would have gone some ways toward making each character more viable.

It is possible to upgrade and unlock new abilities for each of those three characters, and even unlock three new ones with the currency you earn by completing stages, though the imbalance issue remains even with some upgrades installed.

The arcade games that inspired After Wave: Downfall don't really have a story, and they don't need one. They're designed to eat up your quarters and give you a few minutes of fun at a time. Perhaps to give players more value for their money, 7 Raven Studios went above and beyond to inject a little bit of narrative into their game, which is nice!

What's not so nice, is that some of the English text is… let's say incoherent.

7 Raven Studios has headquarters in both New York and Phuket, Thailand, but I would wager that the bulk of the development for After Wave occurred in the latter location. The story is serviceable (it's really just set dressing for some great arcade action), and it was definitely made by competent developers, but there are enough errors and confusing portions of the opening narrative dump (the very first thing you see of the game after starting the story mode), that it is clear that there was some shoddy translation work.

It bothered me a little bit, my whole career is writing, but honestly most players will probably skip right past that screen anyways. There isn't much in the way of narrative text outside of that initial screen, but I felt that it was worth bringing up anyways.

Now, for After Wave: Downfall's best feature: its gameplay. You can play single-player or two-player co-op through a few different modes, including story, arcade, practice, and "extra" mode, the last of which gives you a few different game modes and scenarios to play through. These unlock as you complete difficulty levels in the story mode and will have you floating down a river avoiding obstacles, collecting items in a certain amount of time, doing some tower defense, and that sort of thing.

In-Between Dimensions

The extra mode scenarios are fun diversions, and they add value to the overall package, but you'll spend the majority of your time in either story or arcade mode. And boy, do things get out of hand very quickly in both of those.

Every playthrough begins with easy mode, but even that first difficulty level will put you through your shoot 'em-up paces. After Wave doesn't waste any time getting right down to business, and almost from the get-go your screen will be filled with projectiles, enemies, and collectibles for you to pick up.

The tutorial lets you know that you can use the left trigger to slow down for precision maneuvers, and the right trigger to pick up the speed and dart around the playable area, but I found myself mostly holding down that right trigger. You need all the speed and nimbleness you can get with the amount of screen-filling attacks and the sheer number of enemies, but it's not always possible to avoid taking damage, at least in my experience.

The game is in full 3D, but uses a static camera, effectively making it play like a 2D arcade game. This creates an issue where you're dodging and dealing with enemies on the same plane as you, but then you have enemies attacking from the sky. The projectiles those enemies fire are difficult to decipher from the ones approaching you from dead ahead on the same plane, and I found myself dodging one set of projectiles only to end up in the path of another.

I was able to get used to this aspect of the game a few stages in, but it is still definitely an issue. The same issue is present in boss fights, where the boss character will attack you from both planes, sometimes at the same time, while regular enemies also approach you. Needless to say, you'll probably be faced with a restart screen several times even on the lowest difficulty.

Yes, After Wave: Downfall has a few issues. Some of them don't affect the gameplay (like the translation issues), and some of them definitely do (especially the 2D gameplay with 3D presentation). However, I was never frustrated with After Wave. I found myself wanting to go back for more, even if that last round seemed a little unfair.