Created using GameMaker, Hyperwired is a 2D roguelike twin-stick shooter with a gimmick – your ship has a power plug dangling from it. Wiring yourself to sockets can enhance your abilities and ultimately acts like a key to a lock. Unfortunately, this plugging gimmick is also its biggest frustration.

If I had to summarize Hyperwired in one word, it would be “confusing.” If you dig through the menu, there is a tutorial, but it does a terrible job of explaining the game’s mechanics. Only through playing frustrating trial-and-error will things start to make sense over time.

Like many other twin-stick shooters, your ship is restricted to an arena. Spread through this screen-scrolling map are numerous sockets in which you need to hold a button to connect your ship’s plug. Then, depending on the color of that plug, it will resupply your ship with bullets, lasers, bombs, etc. Which creates the first problem; this is an action game with limited ammo. Refilling and micromanaging ammo slows the pace of play and simply makes it not fun. And again, the game never explains these mechanics to the player.

As if the resource management wasn’t bad enough, the worst part comes from the plug-socket mechanic as a whole. In order to progress to the next stage, the ship must connect with each socket for a set amount of time. However, there is no map/radar system so the player doesn’t know where to find these sockets. Then, the game doesn’t indicate which sockets have already been connected. Using the socket doesn’t make the game more entertaining; it makes the experience worse and more frustrating.

Then, there are other issues that continue to annoy. For example, there is no option to turn off the rumble feature. Since the player needs to constantly shoot (assuming you have ammo), the controller’s shaking essentially never shuts off. Each stage is also littered with ships of all types and sizes but it is hard to distinguish friend from foe. Meaning, there are, what seem to be, floating items, like these weird hovering mask things, but they don’t do anything. You cannot collect them or shoot them. So just having them there causes more concern and frustration. Finally, the game hints at numerous unlockable ships but provide zero indication on how to unlock them. The lack of direction and purpose is impressively mind boggling.

Hyperwired deserves some respect for being creative and trying something new in this vastly overpopulated genre. Unfortunately, this is one of those ideas that sounds interesting on paper but completely falls apart when put into practice.

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com

X/Twitter: @ZackGaz

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