Steel Assault is an action platformer by Zenovia Interactive, and director Sri Kankanahalli. One of the better 2D action platformers in this continuing wave of indie retro-inspired games. I had a lot of fun with this one. It has a great level of challenge to it and respects the player when they figure out strategies to quickly kill bosses. The soundtrack is also really good. It's by QWESTA who did a couple of awesome tracks for ZeroRanger.

It's a cool game. Took me around 18 hours to get every achievement. The Arcade clear took around 12 hours. I have a few criticisms, but not many. Stage 5 is the biggest one. I think that stage is much easier than the previous ones, besides Stage 1, and this is in part because there's just so many shields around. It's pretty breezy and took me the least time to figure out. The final boss makes up for it though.

I do think this game would benefit by simply taking away all upgrades in Arcade Mode or by having a difficulty above Arcade Mode ("Expert Arcade Mode" or something similar) to raise the bar more. Another element I wish this game had was scoring. At the moment, there's a couple of reasons to keep playing if you beat Arcade Mode -- speedruns and no-hit runs. I think scoring would add more depth to both types of runs. A lot of enemies are already skippable and scoring would force you to attempt to clear levels for more points. Even something like score counter for how fast you kill bosses would be really cool.

It's still awesome 2D action platformer and well worth your money. It's 20 - 25 minutes long, which is the perfect length for an arcade game, and it's incredibly satisfying going through levels with that heavy metal soundtrack in the background. I found myself bobbing my head many times.

Reviewed on Jun 26, 2023


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