Boomerang X
OpenCritic Rating
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Boomerang X Trailers
Boomerang X | Out Now | Nintendo Switch + PC
Boomerang X - Nintendo Switch & PC this Spring
Critic Reviews for Boomerang X
Exciting combat, fantastic art direction, and interesting environments only make me wish Boomerang X were twice as long.
Above all, I like the way that Boomerang X sprinkles in combat abilities and just-fussy-enough enemy types. It’s all layered on without needlessly complicating the whole thing. This game starts fun, and it ends fun. There’s no time for your mind to wander, or get twisted up trying to remember the controls, or feel too stressed out. It’s a great flow.
Boomerang X is the 2AM food truck run of arena shooters. You're in and out before you know it, but holy shit is it amazing. The boomerang abilities that form the core of the gameplay are unique and insanely addicting, but there's always new foes and features constantly revealing themselves as the game progresses. It's a brief experience, maybe too brief, but it's still an unforgettable one.
Boomerang X is a fresh take on the arena shooter. Focusing on one weapon, the range in abilities and the ceiling for skill make frenetic combat exciting in just about every instance. The game is rather short, but that works perfectly for the pace of both the story and combat. Only feeling dull in the moments between the action, DANG! and Devolver Digital have an impressive indie on their hands with Boomerang X.
Boomerang X isn't the lengthiest venture and for a game whose attraction lies solely in its gameplay, so one's enjoyment will naturally come down to how embedded in its mechanics you end up becoming.
Boomerang X features instantly gratifying gameplay that will get its hooks into you immediately. Its arena-based combat encourages you to keep moving and flying through the air in order to avoid death, with your boomerang acting as a kind of portable teleport or hook shot. The overall difficulty is a bit tame for the most part, which incidentally means the game is a bit on the short side, but there's plenty of potential for repeat playthroughs and speed runs thanks to the fun, addictive gameplay. If you're a fan of frantic, fast-paced first-person action, then this one will be right up your alley.
Boomerang X, like Disc Room for example - another Devolver Digial prod -, arrives with a simple, unexplored and functional concept. Crossing arenas with a grappling hook and the ability to slow down time to decimate the population even proves fun and challenging, especially when the skill engage depends on your kills. Unfortunately, this is at the cost of an imprecision when you have to go to chop life or fight the final boss, and a repetitiveness in the structure of the game.
Review in French | Read full review
To dismiss Boomerang X as little more than a tech demo would be unfair, but it is also hard to ignore that the game skimps on a lot of elements that would give it depth and replayability or really make the player engage with something more than throwing a weapon to kill waves of enemies, no matter how initially satisfying that can be. Not everyone is going to love the attention-getting and specific art style and level of abstraction, or the bare minimum story or lack of interesting characters. That said, a game that knows how to balance its strengths with just enough story, gameplay, and challenge is worth playing, and Boomerang X definitely knows its strength.
