With enemies all around and deadly traps blocking your path, you’ll need to make use of Jack’s nimblenes and speed as well as her weaponry. This allows for a certain amount of dallying if you’re careful and precise enough, during which time you can dart around the rest of the level gathering up collectibles. Using them will increase the remaining time by 5 seconds. This time loop mechanic can only be manipulated by the cores she’s chasing down.Īeon Drive: An addictive speed-running platformer Aided by her trusty AI sidekick, Jack has just 30 seconds to get through each area and reach the teleporter at the end. It’s a lightning-fast platform game that demands sharp reflexes and heightened muscle-memory to overcome. To be fair to developers 2Awesome Studios, Aeon Drive is the kind of game that doesn’t require any context whatsoever. This is the context within which Aeon Drive justifies its speed-running shenanigans, and I’m 100% on board with it. With her ship in disrepair, Jack must now gather up all the errant drive cores scattered about the place before they explode and destroy half the planet. This was particularly frustrating as this specific mechanic was never introduced in the tutorial but was absolutely necessary in order to complete the final levels of the game.Daring space ranger Captain Jackelyne, or Jack, has crash-landed in the the cyberpunk megalopolis of New Barcelona. While many of them are great, one variety of those puzzles presented a huge headache, which were switch puzzles that required VERA to remain on the switch for a door to open - teleporting back to her would just reset the player. While most stages had alternate paths to keep this from getting egregiously bad, one stage in the final level was impossible until, after playing with the controls, the realization hit that there is an input that can recall VERA rather than just teleport to her. In later stages, VERA is used in more interesting ways such as solving door and switch puzzles. However, using VERA for horizontal and diagonal movement feels great and, after a few successful teleports, will naturally put players into a really satisfying flow state. Throwing VERA is also just as frustrating as it is satisfying, as there are moments when Jack must throw VERA directly above her in order to get through a laser wall, but there isn't enough hangtime after teleporting to comfortably avoid falling back down on said wall. Jack moves well for the most part, but definitely has some hiccups here and there, such as inconsistent detection which makes wall-jumping a gamble at times. Her most important tool is VERA herself, as Jack can throw her to different places and teleport to her, destroy enemies, and bypass certain obstacles like laser walls. There are also small dimensional drives scattered across each level that will extend the time by 5 seconds for every four that are collected, which can often make the difference between success and failure. First and foremost, Jack is agile and has a sword which lets her quickly dispatch robotic enemies, which are more of an obstacle than they are a threat. In gameplay, each stage has a 30 second timer in which to complete it and Jack has plenty of tools to help her do just that. Related: Guardians of Hyelore Review: Good In Short Bursts To save the city, they need to retrieve all six, but they only have 30 seconds before they go critical luckily VERA can create a small time-pocket to extend that time. They get pulled into Earth's orbit and crash-land in the cyberpunk city of Neo Barcelona, which VERA quickly realizes is close to destruction thanks to a chain reaction being caused by unstable dimensional drives. Jack and her robot companion VERA escape their dimension in order to flee from a galactic war and arrive in 'our' dimension.

Aeon Drive's story is more of a framing device than it is an actual narrative.

Aeon drive game