Thank you Atari for sending us this game to review!

According to the most excellent game/documentary Atari 50: The Anniversary Celebration, there was an Arcade game with just a few prototypes made called Akka Arrh. It was developed way back in 1982, but was never brought to market. It's a shame, as I think it would have gained a following since it combined some unique gameplay ideas in a way I haven't seen. This prototype is completely playable in Atari 50, and one of the more interesting highlights of the collection.

This standalone release of Akka Arrh takes the foundational ideas of that arcade prototype, and combines it with the wild mind of legendary game designer Jeff Minter to make this fast-paced and psychedelic action title. I reviewed Tempest 4000 several years back, and Jeff's imprint both there and here is pretty obvious. This game starts with an epilepsy warning for a reason: the constant crazy color flashes are equally dazzling and insane. It's a good thing there is a subdued mode, or I could never show it to someone in my life who actually has suffered from epilepsy! (But for me, the colors are crazy fun and I leave it on the default mode.)

Akka Arrh has you taking control of a goat head maybe? and shooting at invading... things. Geometric shapes I guess? Some are round, some look like stars, and some are rotating or spinny squares or other odd shapes. Some are bright yellow and orange, and charge at you quickly, so they should be dealt with first. Other enemies are some combinations of blue, red, purple, or who knows what else. Attempting to describe the art is almost a fool's errand, as everything looks wacky and psychedelic; if you ever wanted to simulate being on drugs without being on drugs, this might be a great way to do that.

Anyways, your goat head is on a pivot point at the center of the screen. Usually, there is a ring around you, which shows your boundaries. If an enemy gets too close to you, they can enter the downstairs, which is where your health orbs are being protected. Once there, they can attack and take away your health without you being able to defend yourself, so it's important to avoid that as much as possible. If they do get in, you can go downstairs (usually by a button press; on mouse it's middle click) and quickly shoot at them to clear out the danger. You can also take damage by direct hits to the goat head.

You aim at enemies by moving your cursor, either by mouse (fastest and most accurate) or by analog stick on the gamepad. The original arcade used a trackball, so a mouse is probably closest to that experience (and you can always plug in a PC trackball). You can shoot both bombs and regular shots. Bombs are special; while you can shoot as many as you like, only certain enemies, typically round ones, can be damaged by them. But when they explode, they can leave behind a trail of blasts that can explode other round enemies on contact. This also starts a combo meter; the higher your combo, the more points you get. You can easily combo into the hundreds or thousands of points if you are smart with your bomb placement. Each destroyed enemy via a bomb combo adds to your turret shot ammo counter, which is the other type of attack you can use; this encourages intelligent bomb placement.

All enemies can be destroyed via shots, but only some via bombs. So it's really important to use the shots wisely, and make sure that the level you are on has at least some area where a bomb combo can happen; if not, shoot another bomb to restart the combo. You are graded and can get bonus points for using as few bombs as possible while racking up large combos.

Each level (there are fifty) has different geometry present, and it can have a big impact on how you repel the invasion on that level. With earlier levels, there is sometimes a single, simple geometric shape on the playing field. Later on, levels feature multiple regions and interlocking shapes. The way it works is each region is separate from the others, and bombs that land in that region combo and explode, but the explosions stay in the region. Some levels feature regions that have different rates of cleanup; that is to say, the explosions that take place in there can clear out quickly or last a long time. Typically, you want to bomb in regions with very slow cleanup, as that gives other enemies plenty of time to collide with existing explosions.

Level geometries vary greatly, and later on, it can even change while playing. For example, in one level that comes to mind, the square-shaped region gets twisted up like a blanket, and disappears, before coming back later. Of course this is done in the most psychedelic way possible. The graphics don't seem like much at first, but once the action ramps up and the levels start to deform, you quickly come to appreciate how insane everything is. Sometimes, it's more art style than graphical fidelity that matters, and Akka Arrh absolutely oozes style.

The audio is just as wild. You hear sound effects of the shots, of the enemies doing their thing, and explosions. Lots of explosions. On top of all of that, you hear some kind of atmospheric music, with some levels sounding quite different. For example, one memorable level has pillars shaped a bit like the Taj Mahal, and that level has instrument choices that resemble traditional Indian music. Each one is something different. Depending on your performance, there are also voices that you can hear, announcing something or even just one or two-word commentary. It's all done so well and with such crazy sound design that it's very difficult to describe, but I assure you the sound is just as wild as the graphics are.

Akka Arrh starts off nice and easy, with simple tutorial levels. Once you figure out the rhythm of fighting off bad guys, the pressure and difficulty ramps up fast. The first time I played, I used the controller, as that's the default option in the settings. But it quickly became apparent that mouse would be way better (or at least faster and more accurate) and once I switched, my performance went up quite a lot. Being able to hit what you want to goes a long way in a game like this, since you aim a set of crosshairs at your enemies to fire at them.

As you beat levels, the game records your best run, and stores it. You can continue from any level that you got to, but if you only had a small number of health orbs left, you may want to go back a level or two and resume playing from there, instead. For every hundred unused shots on your turret, you gain a health orb. This means that you could enter the level with three health, do really well and end the level with over three hundred shots, and start the next level with six health. The challenge is that when you start a level, you have no shots, as you need to start bombing opponents and racking up shots via combos. Until that happens, you are at a severe disadvantage, as once you run out of shots, it can be difficult to recover. So depending on how difficult the previous level is, it may make sense to replay that, if it means you get to carry over hundreds of shots as you start the new level in a better place. It can be a tricky balancing act as levels get more and more difficult, and more enemies need to be blown to bits.

And morally, that's almost entirely what you will see: shapes being blown to bits. If the goat head-like thing with big horns looks odd to you, I can understand that. According to the ESRB (it's really difficult to pick out individual words with what's happening on screen), the word 'a*se' is used in game.

From a technical perspective, I had no issues with the game. On Linux and Steam Deck, it worked perfectly on my Linux desktop PC with an NVIDIA GPU, but on the Steam Deck with its AMD graphics card, there were graphical anomalies. I am guessing that a future Mesa driver might fix this, but you can't be certain. I hope it gets fixed on (or for) the Steam Deck in the near future, as I think it'd be a well-suited game for the form factor, even if I'll miss my mouse controls.

Akka Arrh at first seemed like an interesting but challenging game bordering on frustrating. Once I started to figure out the rhythm, it quickly became a ton of fun as I got to see some parts of the levels almost play themselves, as the bomb to combo pipeline is so much fun. Then you learn what is most important to defend yourself from, while weapon pickups give you offensive and defensive benefits, like spray shots, defensive triangles protecting your goat turret, and so on. This, along with the art, sound design, and everything else adds up to quite an impressive experience. On the one hand, it's simple - it's just a shoot 'em up. But on the other, it's crazy fun to play, and even watch - as long as you aren't epileptic. If you are, or might be, please be careful and turn down the flashing effects!

If what I have described: the fast-paced gameplay, the psychedelic art and sounds, and the challenge seems interesting to you, then I believe Akka Arrh is totally worth the very reasonable asking price. I believe this game, like many others that Jeff Minter has had a hand in, will become a cult-classic with a loyal following. It's a ton of fun, and I look forward to firing it up often!