Highway to the Moon

I have a soft spot for games that swing big on personality with almost nothing in the budget, and Vernacular Games' scrolling arcade shooter lands exactly in that territory. You play as Jake Helaway, a stunt rider turned road warrior, keeping him on a highway that literally extends into outer space while every criminal faction in the galaxy tries to stop you. That premise is ridiculous in the best way, and the game leans into it with a cast of named factions - the Unger Max Gang, Air Traffic Control, Alien Affairs, Leadersquad - each of which implies a whole satirical universe that the game never fully explains. That restraint actually works in its favor. The core loop is a twin-stick affair: one stick moves, one aims, and you cycle between a standard shot, a super shot that recharges quickly, a dash, and the Phase Shifter. The Phase Shifter is the design's one genuinely clever idea. When you phase out, Jake becomes intangible - bullets pass through him, gaps in the road no longer matter - but you also can't deal damage in that state. So every encounter becomes a small timing puzzle: phase to survive, phase back in to punish. It's not a deep system, but it gives the combat a rhythm that keeps things from feeling like a mindless bullet sponge fest. Each of the five levels runs roughly 20-25 minutes, with multiple bosses per stage and a multi-phase end boss that gives the pacing some structure. There's also a Reality Alternator that lets you tweak the experience, plus unlockable weapons and alternate characters, so there's a thin layer of progression for completionists. The rough edges are real. The visual polish sits on the cheaper end of indie production - functional but not the kind of pixel craft that makes you stop and stare. The SoundCloud-hosted soundtrack the developer pointed players toward during launch suggests genuine enthusiasm for the audio side, and what's in the game has an energetic quality that matches the arcade tone, even if it doesn't reach the heights of the genre's best soundscapes. The bigger practical problem is the lack of a save system. Five levels at 20-plus minutes each means you're looking at a two-hour run with nowhere to checkpoint between sessions. Walk away mid-run and you start over. For a game this short, that design choice turns a casual pick-up into a commitment the moment you sit down, and it's the single friction point most likely to send players to the uninstall button. Still, there's something genuinely handmade here that I want to advocate for. Jake has dialogue boxes scattered through levels - and the game actually has an achievement for destroying them, which tells you something about the personality baked into the design. Silva, the Alien Affairs agent who serves as Jake's foil, adds a layer of character to what could have been a purely mechanical experience. Vernacular Games built a world with its own logic and stuck to it. Whether that's worth your time depends on your tolerance for no-frills production values and your willingness to block out a full evening for a single sitting. Kai, Scout Team

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