Super Trunko Go Review

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve loved twin stick shooters and their ilk. Whether I was hammering away at classics like Super Smash TV or Alien Breed, The Chaos Engine, or everyone’s beloved Geometry Wars, I have always been hooked to the compulsive “one-more go” gameplay. I’m glad to see this is a genre that developers haven’t abandoned in recent times, even if the gameplay has lacked major evolutions. If anything, most have failed to capture the magic of yesteryear. Super Trunko Go, from Dolores Entertainment and 88 Polygons, looks to change this with a fresh take that borrows a lot from the past.

Story and Gameplay

We have a pretty simple story at play here with the evil Dr Tusk invading the world with his band of minions. Clad in armour with a gun for a trunk, our wee pal Super Trunko needs to travel to the various biomes and eradicate the impending threat. What ensues is an isometric twin-stick shooter that initially seems cute, only for it to quickly spin around and kick you in the face.

The first few levels introduce you to the basics and ease you into the combat. The levels start as small labyrinths with branching paths, but become much more expansive as you progress through the game. Areas turn into small combat arenas, as you are expected to clear all the enemies before the laser gate opens to let you progress. You’ll find yourself ducking and diving behind boxes and walls, taking advantage of the dodge mechanic and kiting enemies into positions where you can hit them but they can’t hit you.

Simple enemies take a few hits and make a beeline for you as they are limited to close range damage, with this quickly escalating to a variety of ranged combatants. Regardless of what you come up against, it hits hard, and you really need to look after your health if you hope to make any progress. There are no mid-level checkpoints, so if you die, it’s right back to the start of the level. Limited ammo for each weapon also means you can’t go wild and shoot willy nilly even if there are pick-ups hidden throughout the 30 levels. You will quickly learn how many hits each enemy takes to go down and are taught that switching weapons for different encounters will make things easier.

To help with all this, Super Trunko has a small arsenal of weaponry, all with varying stats and uses. The basic green laser is the workhorse you’ll fall back on most of the time but there’s a rapid fire machine gun and a slower high damage weapon to be found as well. Each has benefits against different enemies and with ammo being limited, it’s worth saving them for those encounters. Thankfully the controls are tight, so aiming and shooting feels solid and movement is slick. The only real issue I had was with the screen shake, that is quite distracting.

As expected, levels invariably gets tougher as enemies take more ammo to kill and the numbers ramp up. With a high number of ranged guys kicking about, things can quickly descend into bullet hell. Now this wouldn’t normally be so bad, but with the isometric view being zoomed in so close it can be tough to see where these shots are coming from. This results in a bit of spray and pray whilst dodging the incoming shots – a total waste of ammo – or falling back on kiting them to a corner where they get trapped on the environment meaning you can get a few clean kills and thin the heard whilst managing your ammo. Weirdly, this only really seems to be an issue when moving to the bottom left of the screen. When moving most other directions, you get a pretty clear view of what is ahead and can plan accordingly. If you do opt to go for those offscreen kills though, there are great little sound cues that let you know you’re landing your shots or when enemies have died.

Each biome ends with a boss fight against a much larger enemy and this is where things can get tough. None of them were particularly memorable and are just big bullet sponges who fill the screen with bullets. It probably wasn’t helped that I kept them off screen and shot in their rough direction as it made evading their attacks much easier. For me, the game really would benefit from a more zoomed out perspective.

The levels themselves are also death traps. The place is littered with spike traps, moving lasers and bouncing things that can quickly sap your health. Most are easily avoidable but occasionally the space to manoeuvre is limited. There’s some mildly perilous platforming at play as well but most areas are walled in and the game automatically stops you from walking off the majority of ledges. This doesn’t mean every ledge is safe though and I found myself launching into the abyss a few times whilst trying to dodge incoming fire.

Presentation

All of this is presented in a cutesy almost Mega-Man style, with characters being chunky but highly detailed. In a cute twist, each enemy type is some sort of animal in battle armour. Everything is nice and sharp and the texture work, whilst basic conveys the environment you are in.

Each zone does appear to have its own musical theme though. These are sort of 16 bit style tunes that constantly loop in the background but don’t stick in your head. Sort of fast paced future/space dance bops that reminds me of the 90s in games I have long forgotten.

Conclusion

Ultimately, Super Trunko Go is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s a fun, tight controlling shooter with some interesting weapon switching mechanics that can occasionally be challenging. The problem is, a lot of the challenge comes from the camera perspective and being killed by offscreen enemies. The boss fights aren’t particularly tough and neither are the normal enemies, but the game quickly throws large groups at you. You just aren’t quite nimble enough to avoid all the heat seeking enemies and potential bullet hell scenarios the game often throws at you. This unfortunately leads you to finding ways to cheese the game and dragging things out. For me, it turned into a game of perseverance over enjoyment and that’s a shame because there is a charming title here.