Paper Nebula is a roguelite space arcade shooter by Pixel Bakery. This is the first game released for this developer so we’re happy to check it out seeing as we do love to support indie developers. What sets Paper Nebula apart from other space arcade shooters is the roguelite aspect of the game. Mainly you’ll be dying a lot at first, but progression and upgrades remain intact.

Paper Nebula takes the look of folded paper objects. Your main ship looks like a paper airplane while enemies resemble that of 2D cutout drawings. The colors are very bright and there isn’t much in the way of darkness. The art is decent, but it’s nothing really to write home about.

While the gameplay at first may seem overly simple, there’s actually a lot going on that you’ll become aware of as you play. You start off with a basic ship and things seem to go pretty well until you hit the first boss and almost instantly get one-shotted. That’s because the game wants you to earn upgrades that will make it easier for you to survive and easier for you to cause damage. However, upgrades seem to take forever to earn, and more often than not, you may just rage quit before you even earn one. The thing is, there’s no indication anywhere on the screen when you’ll earn an upgrade, which makes the game very frustrating because your base ship is just too weak to really do anything.

And with that comes the main issue with Paper Nebula. I understand what the devs were trying to do here and while the core of the game isn’t bad at all, the roguelike elements could really use some work. It takes far too long to unlock upgrades and the way you unlock them isn’t clear. Another issue is with controller support. While there is support, it’s a bit on the buggy side and doesn’t always work.

So is Paper Nebula worth a purchase? That depends. The core game is interesting and makes for a decent shooter, but the execution needs some work. Hopefully, the developers can iron out the gameplay a bit which would go a long way to making this game a bit less frustrating and bit more fun. I know this is a roguelite and you’re supposed to die a lot, but it also doesn’t seem like you make much progress at all with each death, which most roguelites at least try to reward you for death.

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Disclaimer: Received game from developer and/or publisher for coverage purposes.

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