I’m Titanium is Roguelike Asteroids, and it turns out that’s a good thing

As a kid I spent a lot of time playing Asteroids. For you young pups that may not know what that is I recommend spending a few minutes on google because the game I’m referencing in a lot of ways has shaped many of the arcade space shooters we have now. I’m Titanium, from Indie developer SGS Team, feels like a marriage of a roguelike RPG and Asteroids; for the most part, it works fairly well. After spending some time with the game I wanted to give a brief report on the experience. So kick back, grab that coffee and settle in for our review of I’m Titanium.

The premise of I’m Titanium is fairly straightforward. Pick from a selection of ships (many of which you unlock as you play) jump into the action and protect your base from wave after wave of enemies. Asteroids, debris, and fallen enemies drop resources when destroyed that are converted to credits at your base between waves. These credits, in turn, are used upgrade your ship and base with a fairly extensive list of passive and active abilities. Skills and passives such as increased firepower, active defense towers and faster shield recharge all aid in your endless quest to defend your base. If you die or your base is destroyed that’s it, you start back at level one with no progress carrying over.

I'm Titanium

Visually I’m Titanium is a canvas of bright color and flashing light contrasted against the rather detailed vastness of space. The ships, both your characters as well as the enemies, all carry a unique look and feel giving the game a nice mix of variety. Each character ship also carries a unique set of weapons and abilities that aids in creating a distinct look and feel. Due to the nature of the game, it would have been easy for SCS Team to choose a simple, base art style but instead, it seems that great care and detail has been put into every visual element of the game.

Movement and combat are another thing entirely. The ships are a bit sluggish to navigate in the early levels and even after pouring resources into improving the maneuverability it still felt that I was overflying areas and missing important drops. I understand the style of combat SCS is going for and it works alright but a more refined and quicker responding maneuvering system could really kick the combat up a notch.

Combat itself is pretty straightforward with weapons and ammo managed from a small hud at the top of the screen. All ammo and armor and be recharged at your base only between waves which I found to be a nice touch. It forces you to sharpen your skill level as you can and will run out of ammo mid wave if you simply spam the fire button (I’d like to say I tested the theory for the purpose of this review but if I’m being honest I’m just trigger happy).

The RPG elements of I’m Titanium are simple and easy to pick up and are divided between your ship and base. Focusing on your ship you will be introduced to an array of passive increases to existing items such as armor and weapons as well as some skills that can give an increased chance of damage deflection or increased radius of resource collection. These skills help cater the play experience and become crucial to long term survival. On the base side of the progression system, you will find everything from increased shield capacity to the ability to add auto turrets.

What strikes me as an important element in all of this is the importance of developing a build order to your progression so as to find the best order for leveling both your ship and base. This could be a lot of fun for those that like to take the time to experiment and refine their process for progression. Since SCS added a perma-death system to I’m Titanium you will have a lot of opportunities to work out the best build order for your long term survival.

A final item to note is that the game does support two-player local co-op. I haven’t had a chance to test it out myself but from what I can tell it looks to be a drop in – drop out experience allowing a second player to jump in mid combat. I would be interested to see how well this system works. However, the real focus of this title is in seeing just how long you can survive and keep your base going. I’m Titanium supports a full leaderboard system where you can compare your high scores with those of fellow space defenders.

Final Thoughts on I’m Titanium:

I’m Titanium is a fun distraction and will appeal to some. It’s mix of survival, ship and base progression and progressively harder wave style combat could keep some going for quite awhile. At it’s low price point it may peak your interest. However it’s clunky combat and relatively small combat area will probably see a lot of gamers lose interest fairly quickly.

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