Really Big Sky

I put a few hours into Really Big Sky half-expecting a forgettable score-attack filler, and came out the other side with singed fingers and a grudging respect for the whole brutal system. This is a horizontally scrolling, procedurally generated space shooter where the learning curve opens like a trapdoor: your starting ship is underpowered, one hit kills you outright, and the first couple of runs will last under a minute. That opener sounds punishing, and honestly it is. But Boss Baddie built something patient underneath all that chaos. The core loop revolves around Classic Mode, a score-based gauntlet where everything from enemy attack patterns to boss strength to bonus placement is procedurally generated around how you personally play. Die, collect whatever stardust your brief run earned, and spend it on permanent ship upgrades before the next attempt. Better shields, faster engines, harder-hitting lasers: the upgrades roll over every session, meaning each run leaves you fractionally more capable than the last. It is a slow accumulation rather than a dramatic power surge, and some players will bounce off it before the system clicks. Patient ones will find that the longer runs get, the more the game opens up. The drilling mechanic adds a genuine wrinkle on top of the shooting: flip into drill mode and your ship spins and burrows through planets and asteroid clusters to collect hidden power-ups, but you cannot fire while drilling, so the decision of when to switch adds real tactical texture to what could have been pure reflex chaos. Beyond Classic, there are 12 game modes in total, including Marathon, Boss Rush, Countdown (two minutes to post the highest score you can), Pacifism (survive without firing a shot), and the self-explanatory Hell and Nightmare modes. Most are locked at the start, which has divided opinion: some players love the slow reveal; others resent having to grind Classic before they can touch co-op, which supports up to four players locally. The Arcade mode lets you pick up to three perks before a run, drastically changing the session feel, and there is a Retro mode that strips things back to a vector-art aesthetic that has its own quiet charm. Presentation-wise, the game goes big on colour and kinetic screen effects, blurring and bullet-time flourishes that give it a genuinely trippy quality. The soundtrack is pumping and spacey in equal measure, sitting exactly where it should for this kind of game. A cockney British voiceover chimes in throughout, equal parts charming and grating depending on your tolerance for that sort of thing. The weaknesses are real and worth naming. The tutorial barely explains the systems, so early confusion is almost guaranteed. The online leaderboards have historically caused stability problems, ranging from slow loads to full crashes, which takes some shine off the competitive side. And the depth of the upgrade and perk systems is not well communicated, leaving some players unsure whether their choices matter. Steam's user base sits at a modest but broadly positive reception, with the loudest praise going to its visual and audio craft and its replayability, while the loudest complaints land on the unlock grind and the opacity of its systems. This is genuinely a fifteen-minute-burst game, not a three-hour marathon: the procedural generation keeps individual runs fresh, but the overall texture can start to feel familiar once you have seen most of what the mode pool offers. For the right player, though, Really Big Sky is exactly the kind of small, handcrafted thing I find myself defending. It knows what it is: fast, funny, unforgiving, and built for score-chasers who enjoy the ritual of gradual mastery over a system that keeps shuffling the deck.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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