Syder Reloaded

Syder Reloaded is a side-scrolling shoot ’em up set in space that rides the waves of nostalgia and brings you back to the ’90s, as it takes inspiration from various arcade games of that era such as Uridium 2. It’s an updated version of Syder Arcade, which adds new spaceships, improved visuals, and balancing. It was both published and developed by Studio Evil.

The game features a short 6-level campaign mode that follows Captain Reyes and his starship, the Orinoco on a journey to save the space colony of Miza from an ancient alien species threatening their safety.
There isn’t much to say about the story, as it’s really short (it can be completed in under an hour) and it’s the weakest part of the game. While the levels featured are quite fun and provide more of a tutorial for when you’ll play the survival mode, the actual story is nothing you haven’t seen before.
You can select one from eight different starships (although you need to unlock five of them), and each of them has unique weapons and special abilities. You will start with the Dart, the Wasp, and the Mule. Others can be unlocked by completing challenges in the game’s two modes.

Where you will be mostly playing is the survival mode. In it, you will fight against infinite hordes on enemies with only one life. Your goal is to get the highest score possible without dying. Once your ship explodes, it’s done!
Survival mode is both fun and chaotic. Things will get messy fast and it’s just a matter of time before you are overwhelmed, but with sufficient learning, you can get much higher scores.

In both of the game modes, you can find various upgrades for your ship randomly by defeating enemies, which will make you stronger and harder to beat. There are missiles, side shots, rear shots and more! In games like these, I absolutely love to see my guns getting better and better, but in Syder Reloaded it’s a slow process since the rate in which they spawn isn’t the highest. Your upgrades will be removed once it’s game over.

To bring back the nostalgia, Studio Evil put a varied array of different retro graphic filters, such as a black and white 4 bit scheme and the classic Hold-And-Modify display mode from the Commodore Amiga computer. While I personally prefer the more modern look,  there’s a style for everyone. At first, they might be a tad distracting but that feeling of distraction will go away quickly once you get into the action.
Along with this, the game is characterized by an Amiga-style soundtrack composed by Christian Meneghini. The music is really enjoyable and gives that “space adventure” vibe the game has. There are many tracks to listen to, and they might even make you dance a little bit. The game is really colorful: with beautiful nebulas or icy planets in the background and laser bullets always being shot even in the darkness of space, color absolutely isn’t missing.

In conclusion, if you already like side-scrolling shoot ’em up or even bullet hell games, you will absolutely enjoy Syder Reloaded. It’s fun, colorful and its soundtrack is a blast to listen to. I really enjoyed my experience with it and I applaud Studio Evil for their hard work.

Verdict

Highly Recommended 

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Reviewed by Senpavo for the Nintendo Switch. Code provided by Studio Evil.