The simplistic set up helps to distill Space Pirate Trainer's essence as a score attack shooter. Later waves are certainly frenetic, but even with powerups, explosions and shields it doesn't result in complete sensory overload, allowing you to concentrate on besting your previous effort. Topping your best scores is addictive stuff, let me tell you! At one point I managed to get the 31st best arcade score in the world. It's dropped and I now linger in the 70s, but I'll get it back. I've nearly finished my training.
Perhaps Iconoclasts just tries to do a bit too much of everything, which is stunning considering it has come from a single person's creative drive, which is so compellingly impressive. A decent edit of the script, fewer bosses and puzzle repetitions, and the rest could have been refined even more. Seven years ago Iconoclasts would have blindingly stood out on its artstyle alone – as it indeed did when announced, but now it has to compete with a plethora of other captivating 2D pixelart games. Luckily for Iconoclasts that, despite its flaws it still stands tall amongst its peers, both recent and its contemporary forebears.
It's a shame the game is entirely let down by poor controls and sometimes cheap challenge design, both of which are at odds with the game's speedrunning ethos.
Lumini is short, but sweet. What the game lacks in content is easily made up by the blissful audio and artwork, which absolutely make this a little gem of a game. Despite its few flaws, I genuinely enjoyed my time with the Lumini, and their charm made merely gliding around delightful. A mini adventure which often brought a beaming smile to my face, it would be hard not to recommend giving Lumini a go.
Nova-111 should definitely be played by those who enjoy games with unusual and interesting concepts. Despite a few flaws, it remains a great game, featuring some superb moments and while the first few levels are a slow burn, the pace soon becomes manic. I'm personally very excited to see what Funktronic Labs create in the future.