Utopia Must Fall review
A Neon-Hued Love Letter to Vector Classics
During the early Eighties, a battle of display technologies divided arcade games. Games Like Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, and Q*bert harnessed the capability of raster graphics, crafting evocative sprites from grids of pixels. Vector-based games used a fundamental different approach, drawing with lines that resembled glowing pencil strokes. Unlike the oft-cute characters in raster games, vector graphics were cold, angular, and habitually set against inky black backdrops that signaled seriousness. That stark visual style makes a triumphant return in Utopia Must Fall, as you’re saving the last city from annihilation.
Developed by Pixeljam, the game’s visual style and mechanics are a welcome homage to classic games like Missile Command and Asteroids. Here, capital cities, a variety of enemies, and defensive missile blasts are all rendered in crisp, glowing lines. The effect generates a phosphorescent battlefield that simultaneously feels both retro and futuristic.
Katana-Sharp Visuals
But the vector graphics aren’t a good-looking gimmick. Instead, they’re fundamental to the game’s personality. Built on a proprietary game engine, Utopia’s clear-cut outlines and constrained color palette permit players to follow the chaotic action with the burden of visual clutter. This clarity is essential, as the screen can quickly fill with waves of incoming enemies and their projectiles. Just as much as Tempest or Gravitar, being able to quickly prioritize targets is an essential skill for survival. Luckily, you get a bit of assistance, with Pixeljam rendering the most dangerous foes in cycling colors.
Utopia’s gameplay tasks players with protecting humanity’s last metropolis from relentless succession of alien assaults. This pursuit provides players with a stationary turret, located at the bottom center of the screen. By aiming at a crosshair, you let loose with a stream of automatic firepower. Beyond that you have a limited supply of missiles that can be launched Missile Command-style. Each warhead detonation fills the screen with an expanding cloud that wipes out any enemy it touches.
Spreading Your Investments Around
At the end of each frantic wave, Utopia provides you with a new upgrade opportunity, letting you enhance your railgun and missiles, deploy drone turrets, or beef up your shields. The upgrade system is diverse and laid out like a branching tech-tree, providing perks that can dramatically rework your defensive strategy. The system also provides the game with extra longevity.
What truly sets Utopia Must Fall apart from many of its retro peers is the way its vector visuals grow increasingly chaotic. Each upgrade, from a multi-barrel gun, a defensive shield, to an arsenal of nuclear warheads adds new layers of glowing effects and frenetic movement to the on-screen action. The result is an experience that truly feels alive, with every successful countermeasure lighting up the city sky with dazzling display of particle effects.
Utopia Must Fall’s minimalist approach also means the game runs smoothly on a wide range of hardware. Pleasingly, a discrete graphics card isn’t needed with the game effortlessly outputting 60 frames-per-second performance on a Ryzen 7 5825U-powered mini-PC. At present, playing on Steam Deck requires a bit of tuning. To make the current build playable on Valve’s handheld, you’ll want to first tap the Steam Button before going into “Controller Settings” and selecting the “Keyboard (WASD) and Mouse” template. While you can use the trackpads for aiming, instead of the analog, be careful that an errant tap doesn’t accidentally waste one of your nukes. Hopefully, the game will offer full Deck support once it leaves Early Access later this year.
City Under Siege
Utopia’s presentation is further elevated by a moody, synth-driven soundtrack that channels the mood of ‘80s sci-fi. Here, audio and visuals work in tandem to create a tense, immersive atmosphere, highlighted by the thundering detonation of one of your nukes. It’s such a power effect that the game deserves to be played with a set of headphones.
Utopia Must Fall’s vector graphics aren’t just a nostalgic nod. They’re an essential part of the experience, making every moment of city defense both tense and exhilarating. Just as importantly, the game boasts longevity with an array of different perks. Given the game’s pricing, Utopia is a no-brainer for fans of retro action.
