Biolab Wars

I have a soft spot for the kind of game that fits in 28 megabytes and doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is. Biolab Wars is a side-scrolling run-and-gun from 2ndBoss, a micro-studio out of Brazil that built the whole thing with the NES clearly pinned to their vision board. Seven stages, three levels each, four weapon types, frag grenades, and a roster of three playable characters: Finn the ex-Marine bodybuilder, Becca billed as the toughest woman on the planet, and Teddy, an armored dog who was experimented on by aliens and is here to settle the score. That last one alone tells you everything about the tone. The gameplay sits squarely in the Contra lineage. Controls are tight and uncomplicated, enemies move in readable patterns, and the weapon pickups give you just enough variety to keep each run feeling slightly different without ever overwhelming the design. The bosses are where the craft shows through: multi-phase fights with transformation sequences, each one escalating past what the opening Mama Alien warmup suggests. The difficulty curve is gentler than the classic Contra games, thanks to a more generous health bar, which actually works in the game's favor for a casual solo session. The one genuine frustration players raise consistently is the locked firing direction. You shoot straight ahead, full stop. No up-aim, no diagonal. Against some of the later boss patterns it pinches, and the characters share identical secondary weapons rather than having any build differentiation. These feel like resource constraints from a small team rather than deliberate design choices, but they're worth knowing before you sit down. The pixel art earns genuine praise. The color palette pushes the faux-NES aesthetic right to its expressive limits, and the chiptune soundtrack is one of the quiet highlights, genuinely evocative of the era it's riffing on rather than just checking a nostalgia box. The whole thing runs in about 90 minutes on a first clear, which is either a red flag or the ideal lunch-break game depending on your patience for longer commitments. For what it is, the pacing is honest: it doesn't overstay, the final stages escalate cleanly, and the instant-death laser corridor in stage 7-2 has just enough personality to make you laugh when it kills you. Steam players sit at around 89% positive across roughly 109 reviews, which for a sub-two-dollar indie is a meaningful signal. The community comparison to Contra comes up constantly, and it's fair, though Biolab Wars is softer in difficulty and warmer in spirit. The absence of co-op stings a little in a genre that practically invented couch co-op, but the single-player experience is complete and polished within its scope. If you're looking for a 90-minute nostalgia hit with sincere craft behind it, this one punches above its file size.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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