 STEAM DRUNK! Just a short video today about a simple, vertically scrolling shoot-em-up called 1917 The Alien Invasion. Just to be upfront, I got a steam key straight from the developer, and he asked me to look at it, so hey, why not? Plus I need a simple shooter after the huge basketball golf and NES videos I've done the past few weeks. So yeah, as you can see, this is a pretty straightforward, less-is-more type shoot-em-up. Not a lot of bells and whistles here, just a couple weapons, a clear-all attack, and you just try and survive. This isn't much of a bullet hell type game, although those elements do show up here and there. Most importantly, this game gets the fundamental shoot-em-up stuff right. It's a good balance of speed between your ship, enemy ships, and enemy projectiles, the latter of which get cranked up big time on boss fights. Take one hit and you're dead, but there's plenty of shields around so you can absorb one extra hit. You have unlimited lives here, but there's no checkpoint, so you start at the beginning of the level after you die. What I like best about the action here is that you really have to use the entire screen instead of just hanging back and dodging. Sometimes you have to use your surroundings like this sequence here. There's little design elements like that that pop up here and there. And yeah, since this is a shoot-em-up, this game is of course pretty dang hard, but it's not hard to the point of being totally unapproachable and inaccessible. The game's biggest flaw is that it is way, way too short. There's only five very short levels here and five bosses, so that kind of sucks. Bear in mind though that this is the kind of game predicated on points and high score, and that's due to the combo point multiplayer system that allows you to rack up points quickly. If you don't destroy something before the meter on the lower right runs out, your multiplier is reset to one. So yeah, the game is short, but once you develop some skill for it, you can plow through it in no time flat and go for the highest score in the Steam community. I suppose I should address the title of the game at some point. 1917, The Alien Invasion, does in fact take place in 1917, and you fly a World War I style triplane through space, uh, somehow. As Dr. Brunhild Stahlmühler, who humorously insults you as you get hit. It's pretty funny. I should also mention the music in this game is excellent. Every track is memorable, really well done, and fits the game nicely. There are a few flaws here, though. One I've already mentioned is the length of the game. Another is the lack of a button map, so you can assign the fire or clear all buttons to anything else. And also, this isn't really a flaw, but the sound design behind the explosions and weapon fire could stand to be beefed up a bit more, to have a little more oomph behind them, but I guess that's just a personal preference. Anyway, yeah, 1917, The Alien Invasion is a nice, simple, approachable pick-up-and-play shoot-em-up. It's very short, and that might scare some people off, but if you're into these kind of tests of skill, it's a quality title.