It’s extremely easy to underestimate Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime. This might be partially because it looks like Lisa Frank exploded all over it. But Lovers is not just a cute and cuddly game filled with adorable bunnies, rainbows, and dancing best friends. It’s also full of spinning saws and lazer cannons, huge explosions, and lots of overwhelmingly difficult levels. It’s a strangely endearing juxtaposition that is only enhanced when shared with a friend in the game’s local co-op mode.
Lovers is not a new game, having seen releases on PC and Xbox last September, where it received positive critical reviews. However, Asteroid Base’s project has finally arrived on PlayStation and, as such, will now reach a new audience. The gameplay proves to be fundamentally the same as on PC and Xbox, utilizing the same successful gameplay mechanics on the PS4 to great effect.
Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime is a game in which you and an intergalactic space partner (either a second player or an AI pet) travel through various levels to rescue other various, adorable animals and defeat the horrible powers of anti-love. Gameplay unfolds in two layers: you directly control a character who moves throughout a round 2D spaceship. You’ll direct your character to various modules across the ship, which then gives you control of an attachment on the outside of the ship, such as a blaster, a shield, or a spinning multi-saw of death. This is also how you move your ship through the levels: Grabbing the motor module allows you to control the ships engine.
If you happen to play a single-player campaign, you’ll need to direct your AI pet to the module you’ll want them at. However, once they arrive, the game’s AI kicks in and does what it needs to do. For the most part, the AI is good, but every once in a while my AI friend would miss something important, or the extra steps of directing my AI friend to another module would be too much for me in a time of crisis. Couch Co-op is where Lovers thrives. Working together, shouting at the screen, and multi-tasking to overcome a particularly heavy wave of enemies is an exhilarating experience.
And there are plenty of enemies to defeat. Lovers gets you through the tutorial quickly enough, but becomes quite difficult in a short time. This isn’t much more than an annoyance, but it is yet another way in which one might underestimate Lovers. An adorable cast of characters, a cute soundtrack, and the snuggly aesthetic is only a facade for a hardcore co-op adventure. The bosses at the end of each level provide unique challenges, not unlike classic Zelda bosses that require a strategy to defeat.
The main campaign is ultimately short, but there are a number of unlockables, such as additional ships, and higher difficulties to keep challenging your resolve. You need to rescue at least five animal friends to progress to the next stage, but collecting more is a recommended endeavor. That being said, the replay factor in Lovers is present, but probably low for most individuals, excepting the occasional night of co-op shenanigans.
So, we’ve established that Lovers is a good game. It has pleasant gameplay, an effective artstyle, and thrives on the fun nature of 2-player co-op. But I have a duty to give you, dear reader, not only the fundamental information on this project, but my honest opinion as well. Here’s my problem with Lovers: I never got sucked in. I might be in the minority here, and I might end up writing it off as a personal block, but Lovers never succeeded in really grabbing my attention. If I hadn’t needed to push through the game for the sake of this review, I might have set it down and come back to it in a few months.
This, by no means, makes Lovers a bad game. But the story doesn’t give much motivation to push forward and the gameplay is fun for a while but repetitive after a time, relying instead on the novelty of couch co-op to carry it to the end. I just couldn’t get into it. It’s quite possible that this just wasn’t the game I needed in my life right now.
All of that being said, I do recommend Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime to those looking for a game with great gameplay mechanics to play with a partner or significant other. Those who take a chance on Lovers (or those who just need a visual injection of cuddly animals and rainbows) will undoubtedly find a successful game here.
A PS4 code for Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime was provided by Asteroid Base for the purpose of this review