Thunderflash (Switch)

Thank you Ratalaika Games for sending us the review code!

Thunderflash is a top-down arcade-like shooter where you must defeat many enemies and bosses in order to stop an evil group from doing evil things. You have 4 weapons to use and 5 levels to play. I liked this game, and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys arcade games like this.

In Arcade mode, you play through the levels in order and start with a set amount of lives. Whenever you launch the game, it gives you some settings to change to your playstyle, and one of the options is how many lives you get. You can choose 5, 10, or 20. If you die in arcade mode, you have to restart from level 1. That sounds pretty bad(although lots of classic games did that), but that’s when the Stage Select feature comes into play. This lets you choose which level, and which part of the level you want to start at. This means that if you want to see what a certain boss fight does, or maybe if there is a certain part of a level that you really like, give this feature a try.

In Boss Rush mode, it is supposed to take you through all of the bosses in the game, and of course, you must defeat them. You may have noticed that I said “supposed to” there, and that’s because there is a bug that makes it so after the third boss or so it just skips all the rest and takes you to the final level. It is quite sad that it doesn’t work, but it is what it is.

The final mode is Survival mode. In survival, you must defend yourself from different types of robots to practice your skills. There are three types of drones: one shooting with a flamethrower, one with a laser, and one with a bullet. In the middle of the map, power-ups will spawn. One cool thing about this mode is that it lets you choose what music you want playing while you fight.

There are three (four, if you count the starting weapon) power-ups that you will find either on the ground, or in barrels that you can shoot to open. There is the three-way, which lets you shoot slightly faster and in three directions. There is also the flamethrower, which shoots an instantaneous shorter-ranged beam of fire that instantly incinerates anything it touches, and the heavy machine gun, which lets you fire lots of bullets in quick succession. All of these power-ups have limited ammo(except for the starting weapon). You cannot switch between them or take them off, and the only way to remove them is to use up the ammo.

Morally, Thunderflash is alright, but there are some details that it could be better without. For example, there is a picture of your character to the side of the screen, and when you get hit, he winces, and when you are low health, he gets covered in blood. Also, when you kill an enemy, there is a pixelated splatter of blood. Another thing is that there is a boss that appears and acts like a cultist, and a buddha statue can be seen in one of the levels.

Thunderflash has a nice, charming arcade feel to it, and I really appreciate that game developers are still making games similar to some of the older ones. If you like arcade shooter games as well, you should check this one out.