Ever wondered how it feels to be trapped inside a robot facility with drones tracking your every move with sentry turrets trying their best to do their jobs?
A flashy sci-fi shooter with a soundtrack that will make you want to do kill highlights, we take a look at this indie FPS game from solo developer Mickael Morgado a.k.a. HYTEK94 and we immerse ourselves in the world of Emitters.
This game is developed using Unreal Engine 4 and it’s been in continuous development since 2017 and I thought it would be nice to give it a chance and review an underrated game after browsing through the #IndieDevGame hashtag posts on Twitter.
First Impressions In Saving This Company
The first minutes into the Emitters training grounds already gave me a feel of Star Wars and Portal and the fast-paced action gameplay from Hyper Scape minus the high skill curve.
Weapon designs and customizations look decent and I even managed to try the latest Jetpack update which made the game more fun. You can even call airstrikes as well as use your own drone to fight the robot horde.
The single-player experience was decent but adding multiplayer could potentially make this game even better. Emitters also give out a familiar atmosphere making you reminiscent of the classic arena shooters like Quake.
Well-designed and Challenging Levels
Each level also gives you up to 23 waves of enemies to fight while not feeling repetitive every time you die on each escape attempt.
The level design also delivers a different atmosphere. So far my favorite level is Industry because the map visuals stood out the best for me.
Probably the most challenging part of playing this game is catching all the batteries in each level because the only way to get to the next area is to place them in their respective chargers and you get a keycard to go to the next level.
Take note that drones will continue to spawn even if you’re done clearing the required waves.
The developer also made sure that we won’t be able to get the batteries easily on every level because you would need to use the obstacles around you to obtain them like the jump pads scattered around the map.
Deal With A Lot Of Annoying Drones Including Androids
The first few levels felt like I thought the game was going to be easy since I’m just here shooting spawning drones and it felt like an aim trainer at first. But later on, I’d be surprised that I’ll suddenly be swarmed with more aggressive robots such as this one.
So you have to be quick at thinking off your feet if you wanna survive every level because enemy wave spawns here on Emitters can get annoying the longer you stay in one area.
The turrets don’t give you the best support but at least they’re trying. After all, you’re trying to save a malfunctioning company so it’s probably a given that some turrets don’t work the way you expect them to.
If you want to know how powerful each enemy is in this game, you can take a look at the game’s website.
But if I get to pick the most annoying drones, it would be the Alfa and X-Class drones because they can get into your nerves with their small hitboxes and aggressive behavior.
Mediocre Story But Replayability Potential Is There
I’ve always been a fan of these short but sweet fast-paced shooters and playing Emitters felt like playing a dungeon crawler and roguelike.
It’s not as great as Muck or Risk of Rain but it will pass as a good casual time killer. However, for those who are looking for an award-winning storyline, you won’t find it here.
The story is pretty simple: you are a military android developed by Emitters and your task is to destroy these rogue drones inside the company.
It took me around two hours to finish the game while “hacking” some parts of the game like this funny bug that I found in one of the levels where I was operating the drone while I’m flying with the Jetpack active.
But depending on your skill level and experimenting with your favorite loadouts, you might be able to finish this game at least three hours at max.
Verdict
Despite the minor bugs that I found while playing the game, it still gives a refreshing take on the FPS genre. But we have to give credit to the solo developer for working so hard in this game.
Emitters can even be played as an alternative aim trainer especially if you’re into playing Call of Duty: Warzone and Apex Legends (or if you prefer indie, Splitgate). This game can also potentially fall under the speedrunning category.
I’m looking forward to the next updates especially when multiplayer features come out. Just add in more game modes like a “player versus drone” and a time attack mode and we can see Emitters improve in the future and it can probably make its mark in the Sci-Fi genre.
If you like what you see and want to support this game’s continuous development, feel free to support this indie developer by purchasing Emitters on Steam and have fun raging on the X-Class drones once they manage to swarm you.
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This review is based on the PC version of Emitters. The key was provided by Emitters
