With Saviors, the developers at Sharpened Edge Studios have released a small, fine indie shoot'em up that doesn't have to hide in the broad mass of the indie scene.

It offers us three game modes that we can choose between: Arcade, Survival, and Story.

While the survival and arcade modes are based on the classic shoot'em-up models, in which you can choose between several fully equipped ships at the beginning, the core element of the story mode is to put together the armament of the gunship itself.

In Arcade or Survival, you only get one chance to finish the game successfully and have to start it all over again after a death, or from the last level start.

In story mode, on the other hand, you can choose between three pilots at the beginning, who differ in the speed of their space gliders. That and a few small pictures that are displayed during the mission briefings are the only differences between the characters. The remaining status values of the ship are defined by the player himself in the course of the advancing story mode by upgrading the ship according to his ideas.

The plot

The background story of Saviors is limited to the minimum you can expect from an action game:

Humanity has managed to establish a seemingly peaceful first contact and trade relationship with extraterrestrials. After everything has been quiet for some time, however, all technical devices are now starting to go crazy and attack the people who built them.

Only a few things are exempt from this. So does the hero's ship and the technical equipment of his colleagues, who have refrained from trading with the aliens.

So the matter is clear: Our alien "friends" have corrupted humanity's technology in order to attack it.

With this, the game already has its hook as to why everything on the screen has to be shot down and shoots at the player in return: Completely sufficient and satisfying for a shoot'em up.

The game tells the story in small text windows, which are displayed between the individual missions. What is very pleasing are the sarcastic comments of the selected character. She always comments on the given goal by saying that it's time to finally shoot everything down. Rightly so!

All We Need Is Skill

Before the action finally begins, however, the player has the opportunity to improve the ship. For this purpose, so-called "perks" can be distributed to attack, defense, hull stability and all other properties. Thus, the player determines the status values of his fighting machine himself.

It's just a shame that once you have chosen improvements, you can't remove them after starting a mission. If you don't know what to expect, you can "get bogged down" here and, with an incorrectly equipped ship, get bitter problems in the last levels of the story mode. Fortunately, Saviors offers its players the possibility to set the difficulty level before starting each mission, which is why this is potentially not a problem. However, if you want to continue playing with a skilled-up ship on a higher difficulty level, all hope is unfortunately gone and the story mode has to be started all over again.

Good old machanics, skilfully packaged

A small special feature of Saviors is that the player's gunship is equipped with 3 different weapon systems: frontal armament, sidefire and an extra weapon.

The standard weapon always fires forward, while the sidearm can be switched. With this, the player can either fight the enemies directly in front of him, or shoot to the side if he wants to avoid being surrounded. Both of these weapon systems have infinite ammunition, which means that continuous fire can be given with them at will.

The secondary weapon is far stronger and is very useful in dicey situations or boss fights. However, as you can imagine, this is only available in limited quantities and is only replenished after completing a mission.

Apart from the sidearm, Saviors unfortunately offers nothing that sets it apart from the broad mass of shoot'em ups. At the same time, however, the developers have not tried any experiments that could not work.

Which means in plain language that rock-solid gameplay is offered here, without frills, experiments or special features.

Technically good Indie Game

Graphically, Saviors, for the 99 cents that the game costs unreduced on Steam, offers a really good performance. Enemies explode all over the screen or fire their colorful projectiles through the area. For an indie shooter in this price range, you can't complain. Only the backgrounds seem a bit sterile and lifeless at times, but that doesn't really bother with the fireworks in the foreground.

Unfortunately, the sound effects don't really inspire either. Both shooting and damage sounds are very weak.

As compensation for this, however, you get a very good soundtrack, which wonderfully accompanies the gameplay and is offered for purchase separately for good reason.

Saviors in one sentence: Skilfully presented Indie-Shooter

Genre: Shoot'em Up | Developer: Sharpened Edge Studios | System: PC | Year: 2016