Subaeria from Illogika Studios is an interesting action puzzle platformer on PlayStation 4 with some roguelike thrown in for good measure. Learn more about it in our Subaeria review!

 

In Subaeria, you take on the role of Styx, a girl who is seeking revenge for her family who was murdered by the overlord of Subaeria. She will need to use her wits and tools to get the murderous robots patrolling each area to turn on each other. You will need to explore the underwater city of Subaeria – hence the name of the game – and use your apps and boosts to stay alive and one step ahead of your enemies. There’s a lot of trial and error involved in this one as you learn the ins and outs of this clever and fun release. The game’s story is presented by way of a comic book style panel-by-panel presentation with a colorful and charming art style.

As for the game’s controls, you can move Styx with the left analog stick, jump with the X button, and you can roll with the Circle button to escape danger. The right analog stick will control a drone you can position just right before unleashing an app with the L2 or R2 buttons. Each app has a specific duration, a set of total charges as well as a cooldown period, which means you can’t just spam them over and over again. The good news is that you can level up your apps to make them better.

As for the apps you can use, you can collect them as you progress in the game. There’s Decoy which can be used to create a clone of Styx which will make cleaners attack it on sight; Push which will create a powerful magnetic field that will push away all cleaners and objects; and Master which will move all targeted cleaners towards the same direction of the drone you control, as well as to control the orientation of turrets, to name a few examples. Your first app will be the Master app, followed by the Push app, and then the Decoy app, but there are plenty more apps to find.

 

The game will start by throwing you into a short tutorial section so that you can learn all of the basics, how to make the most of your apps, and how to get robots to attack each other or to control them so that they end up being destroyed by deadly lasers. You’ll also learn about the in-game currency you get for every enemy you defeat, currency which you should collect before leaving an area. You’ll also start to get messages transferred to your drone, so be sure to check them out by pressing the Options button and going over to the messages tab. You can also check your status here and review how you’re doing with leveling up your apps.

You’re going to die in this one… a lot. Once you get a game over you will get a stats menu that will show you how long you managed to play for in this run, the number of app charges used, the number of cleaners destroyed, the money you’ve collected, how many boosts you’ve collected, if you defeated any enemies, and how many of the 50 total apps available in the game you’ve already collected. There are ten endings in total, 11 boosts to get, three character perks to unlock and you can also max out all 50 apps, so there’s definitely a lot to do in this one! Every app you unlock in one run will be made available at random spots in your next run, so you’re always making some progress. You can also spend money to buy apps, so be on the lookout for those items!

The game has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy, with a nice variety of objectives to complete. The first trophy you can get is the one for speaking with an NPC fifteen times in a row (which takes less than a minute to do), and after that you have trophies for defeating 500 cleaners, chatting with 200 NPC, suffering 5,000 points of damage in a single game (which will require you to heal with pick-ups until you’re close to death to rack up those points), dying once, dying nine times and dying 100 times, visiting 50 rooms in a single run, and one trophy for unlocking each of the boosts and apps listed in the trophies. You’re going to be spending a lot of time with the game if you want to get your Platinum, but it’s not impossible.

Subaeria is a different type of action puzzle platformer with some roguelike elements. You’ll end up dying a lot, but you’ll make some progress with every run as you unlock new apps, boosts, and perks to change how you approach your next run. Once you get into the groove, your runs will flow without issue.

Disclaimer
This Subaeria review is based on a PlayStation 4 copy provided by Illogika Studios.