Wells

My honest first thought after booting Wells was: this is a game that wants to be Metal Slug but shipped with maybe a quarter of the ambition. That's not entirely a condemnation. There's something earnest about Tower Up Studios putting a top-hatted smuggler named George M. Wells in a grimy steampunk city called Percepolis and asking you to shoot your way through his revenge story against a MegaCorp boss named Hyde. The premise has a pulpy charm that the game itself, sadly, never fully delivers on. As a side-scrolling run-and-gun with 2.5D graphics, the core loop is exactly what you'd expect: move right, shoot things, don't die. Wells carries a rotating arsenal of weapons, each with a distinct use case for different enemy types, and crucially none of them carry infinite ammo pressure - instead, they overheat after sustained fire and force a brief cooldown. It's a small mechanical wrinkle that adds a rhythm to combat, a kind of breathe-and-burst cadence that works better than it sounds on paper. The weapon variety itself is a genuine highlight; bouncing bombs that ricochet off metal surfaces, drone-busting tools, and a few surprises keep the loadout from feeling static. Boss fights cap each level, and the game also breaks up the on-foot segments with a steam-powered motorcycle stage - a classic run-and-gun tradition that Wells at least checks off the list. Where it stumbles is almost everywhere else. Reviewer consensus from launch was pretty clear: the backgrounds have some visual personality, but the character art and animations are repetitive, and the muted color palette makes it genuinely difficult to track your own sprite during busier moments. The story is told through a handful of sepia-toned cutscene panels, which is either charmingly retro or frustratingly thin depending on your tolerance for excuse plots. Interaction moments, like pulling levers, require a melee input that only registers in a very specific position and only when you stop shooting - an odd friction point that feels unpolished rather than intentional. The whole thing clocks in around three hours, which is a reasonable commitment, but there's essentially no replay hook waiting at the other end. For a certain kind of player - someone who grew up burning quarters on side-scrolling shooters and wants a low-stakes Saturday afternoon with a steampunk skin - Wells delivers just enough. It won't surprise you, challenge you, or leave you thinking about it an hour later. The soundtrack, credited to Andre Furtado and Leandro Skald, is the one element that punches above its weight: the track list reads like a mood board for the city itself, with titles like "Threats of Percepolis" and "Steam Threat" doing quiet atmospheric work that the visuals don't quite match. If you love the genre and can meet the game on its own modest terms, there's a thin but real enjoyment here. If you're hoping for any kind of depth beneath the surface, this one will exhaust its welcome before the credits roll.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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