Asteroids Do Concern Me takes inspiration from three sources; side-scrolling ’helicopter’ games like Scramble and Super Cobra, various Flash apps that challenge you to compete for distance, and a bit of Star Wars. While derivative of many different things, Asteroids Do Concern Me succeeds thanks to its level of polish; it’s well presented and has great controls. ...Rather, it has great control, singular; the only thing players do in this game is press the A button at the right time to avoid slamming into obstacles. That may sound boring, but it’s not; there is actually a great deal of skill involved in figuring out not only when to press A, but for how long. A mistake in either of these matters will cause you to crash into a space rock, ending the game.
The game puts you in control of a spaceship that is constantly scrolling to the right, and you have one major goal; don’t crash. You’re scored on how far you manage to get before dying, and the major challenge in the game is getting further than you did in previous runs. This is complicated by a few obstacles, such as your ship constantly losing altitude and having to navigate an asteroid field at the same time. If you fall too low then you will hit the bottom of the stage and crash, but applying too much thrust will result in the same thing by crashing you into the top of the stage. Yet if you don’t apply enough thrust at the right time, you’ll crash into asteroids around the mid-field area, so you’re constantly juggling how much thrust to apply and when to do it.
All of this is done with just the A button, making for a game that is very easy to learn. It’s not a ’quick time event’, and you’ll need good timing to control the ship. In some cases, mashing it down and holding it is the right call... while others need just the shortest tap, and you’ll also need to learn to ’feather’ the button at times to maintain altitude. This is what gives Asteroids Do Concern Me most of its depth, and it’s joined by having four different modes to play. At first these modes appear to be just cosmetic changes (having the game look like it’s running on an old monochrome display, or replacing the asteroids with clouds and pegasi and other cute things, etc.), but each mode does seem to have at least subtle differences in how they play.
It’s touches like these that help elevate Asteroids Do Concern Me from being just a derivative of other ideas, instead making it a good game. Sure, the Star Wars jokes in the title and dash text are cute, and the game mechanics come from established sources, but it’s so well presented and tuned that it ends up being worth playing. Your $1/80 MSP purchase should keep you busy for a few hours, and that’s absolutely fine for the cost.
