Over 4,500 indie games in I’ve seen a little bit of everything, covering every genre, subgenre, and weird corner of gameplay. I’ve also seen efforts ranging from mind-blowingly incredible all the way down to depressingly bad. I’m here today to review one of those near the furthest down the ladder I’ve seen, possibly not really even earning the right to be considered part of the ladder anymore.

The first problem, and it’s a pretty egregious one, is that it is making no attempt to hide the fact that it’s trying to pull the look, style of play, and general vibe of Hotline Miami. The follow-up issue though is that it appears whoever the developers behind this were, they failed to understand that even within the pretty old-school and blocky pixel looks the game had, there were complexities and nuances that were a key to making the game what it was, going well beyond merely its looks and very violent tendencies. Unfortunately, all of that nuance and polish appears to have been lost in translation, leaving only a very pale imitation of the original, at best.

What cripples the experience completely, and moves it from the derivative column to the one for being outright broken, are the aiming controls. Considering the high-speed intensity the game is looking to bring to the table, the problems with aiming are inexcusable and really make it pointless to play. The problem is that your reticle isn’t kept at a limited or constant distance from you, letting you see where you’re aiming in terms of direction, it instead is able to free float anywhere. That just happens to include going off the screen entirely, making anything critical you’re doing an instant failure. It just derails the entire experience, and wouldn’t be acceptable in a much slower-paced game, but in something like this it’s plain suicide. This is a waste of time on multiple levels, and unworthy of being published in this busted state in the eShop.