A review copy was provided by the developer.

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At the highest difficulties, twin-stick shooters can make for exhilarating moments as you fire back at overwhelming forces trying to blow you to pieces. That's the general expectation I had from Geometry Arena 2 (GA2), but I thought it might be on the more casual side with its difficulty. A game I could mindlessly play, instead of needing to crank up the adrenaline and chug some gamer fuel. I was sort of correct, not expecting it to reach the extent it did though.


There's various options you can tweak, but at its core, this is a twin-stick shooter where there isn't really an end goal. You don't have a final floor to reach, or an inspiring boss battle to conquer. This harkens back to the idea of earning high scores, where you can toggle different settings to increase your multipliers, surviving as long as possible through a gauntlet that will at some point overwhelm you. Each wave that you manage to beat earns you a choice between three upgrades, increasing your strength at the trade-off of enemies becoming more potent as well.

My main problem with this title is that after a certain point, you're not really playing it anymore. The balance between your attacks and enemy spam gets pretty out of whack, while the screen is so overloaded, I can't even tell what's happening. At that point, there's no value in me controlling my character. It took me less than two hours to run into this problem, with the upgrades I chose making it so I'd survive waves without even having to move. To be fair, I have to reach this broken state on any given run, but the end result will always be a point where I couldn't meaningfully play if I wanted to, as indicated by my one screenshot.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3654635244
As someone who's strongly a controller advocate, I don't find the choice of inputs to be ideal. Why would my attacks and abilities be relegated to shoulder buttons when the face buttons are available? Thankfully you can toggle auto-attack as an option, and I don't see any reason not to. To be fair, a weapon or two would have strategic benefit to timing it right, but if you get a solid build, it seems to remove that necessity. Otherwise, I'd say the control scheme is fine, as long as you don't overwhelm the game, and cause it to start lagging.


Shapes never seem to be able to get along together, as they're always squabbling in these minimalist kind of games. Regardless, I didn't see any plot or story elements behind this title.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3654634980
Considering how frantic the action gets on screen when you combine too many power-ups and effects together, it's a good thing the design isn't anymore complicated than basic shapes and figures. Otherwise, enemies with proportions, animated frames, and other visual effects would cause the entire game to lag much earlier. Although the number of enemies on screen is a factor, the real problem is how many bullets, projectiles, and other attacks you launch as you increase how many triggers can cause them to activate and build on top of each other. However, with how simple the visuals are, the fact that the game lags merely from playing it in a reasonable fashion doesn't really reflect well on how it's been created. The human eye can't detect everything occurring anyways, so it's not a benefit to have this much chaos taking place.


With what the developer was aiming to achieve, I'd think they'd want several more songs, or greater variety in the tunes, in order to keep those noises from getting too grating. I found that when I was listening to the background music, it got irritating fairly quickly. Certain sound effects can also be pretty annoying, such as if you create a safety zone and keep having your full health bar replenish endlessly. Ultimately, this is pretty easily resolved by just playing some background tunes of your own instead.

https://v1.steam.hlxgame.cc/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3654634610
🌟 You can personalize the color options for your attacks, your pet, and enemies. I altered that immediately, and it made distinguishing between everything very simple.
🌟 The right combination of upgrades make you feel powerful, even if you aren't doing much.


❌ Some abilities seem to have a detrimental effect, making your build much weaker. For example, boomeranging bullets, as the range is cut in half so they can circle back on nearby enemies. I've taken this before, but it only seems to hamper me.
❌ The different weapons and builds don't alter how you play as dynamically as I'd have hoped. It will at the beginning, but it falls apart as you progress, more or less turning into the same thing each time.
❌ Earning all the achievements is more a matter of patience, willingness to grind, and attending to particular goals, instead of having to be good at the game.


🔍 I'm not a min-max guru, but I liked options that increased how many projectiles I had, bullet pierce, and rebounds. Obtaining numerous power-ups automatically and having better grenades also seemed a powerful avenue to go with.
🔍 To reduce lag, toggle off visual effects, like all the particles.
🔍 You don't really need to move all that much in this game.


Simply enough, I think the developer took the idea of a game that can play itself too far. There's a section in the Settings that lets you auto-run GA2 to the extent it'll replay itself after dying, without you having to engage at all. After a certain point, I definitely toggled those options and allowed this title to grind through monotonous sections, unlocking achievements for me, most of which revolve around surviving long enough to obtain a good chunk of XP points. Because the gameplay breaks down to the point you can't really engage with it meaningfully, there's not much incentive for actually playing yourself, which is a cardinal sin for any game. This works well as a test of concept or prototype, but I would say it fails as a Steam release, and wouldn't recommend getting it.