Incandescent 2

I went into Incandescent 2 the same way I approach any tiny solo-dev project: with patience and genuine curiosity about what one person decided was worth building. Stephen Crabb made the original Incandescent back in 2015, earned a mostly-positive reception from over a hundred Steam reviewers, and then quietly kept working. This sequel is the result of that continued effort, and it shows both the growth and the limitations that come with that kind of solo, bootstrapped development. What you are getting here is a top-down arcade twin-stick shooter built around wave survival. Your ship sits in the middle of the screen, enemies pour in from multiple directions, and you use the left stick to move and the right stick to aim and fire. The fantasy is pure and immediate: bright colours, fast movement, the satisfying crunch of clearing a screen. Crabb added multiple difficulty modes to the sequel along with a new roster of enemy types not present in the first game, and the Steam leaderboard system gives the score-chasing loop somewhere to point. Mouse and keyboard works, full controller support is there, and the game scales across 720p, 1080p and 1440p resolutions without fuss. The honest conversation is about scope. This is a micro-scale arcade experience. There is no build system, no unlockable ship loadout, no narrative wrapper holding runs together between waves. The escalating difficulty is the entire design statement, and whether that holds your attention beyond an hour or two depends almost entirely on how much you love chasing personal bests on a leaderboard. Genre veterans who have spent time with Geometry Wars or even the first Incandescent will recognize the shape of the thing immediately and know whether it is for them. There is a noted report from the Steam community forums of a severe frame-rate drop occurring after a couple of minutes of play on certain hardware configurations, which is worth keeping in mind if you are on older or mid-range specs. A game this lightweight should not be taxing anything, so if you encounter it, the community forum for the title is the best first stop. What I find quietly affecting about Incandescent 2 is the sincerity behind it. Crabb describes the sequel as a project built from lessons learned on the first game. That is an honest framing. The colours are vivid in a way that feels considered rather than accidental, the arcade structure is clean, and the leaderboard gives the experience a social edge that a game this small has no obligation to include. It is not a game asking for thirty hours of your life. It is a game asking for ten focused minutes with a controller in hand, and on that narrower terms, it makes its case.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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