Black Future ’88 Review
The future is bright, and dark.
Cyberpunk! Twin-stick shooting! Roguelike! Synthwave! Permadeath! Neon pixel art! Black Future ’88 has so many ticks on the indie game zeitgeist checklist, it’s frankly quite impressive. More importantly, this amorphous blob of indie inspo puts all of those ideas to good use – so much so, I’m sure we’ll see derivatives of it in the years to come.
Why ‘Black Future ’88’? In this dystopia, so the story goes, clocks stopped when shit hit the fan with a nuclear apocalypse. Survivors were so busy trying to keep surviving, they stopped bothering to keep track of time – so it’s 1988 forever. It’s a perfect excuse for sizzling neon visuals and a rockin’ synthwave soundtrack, at the very least.
Paradoxically in this time-unconscious era, however, you’ll have to be painstakingly aware of time. For reasons I never did fully understand, you have just 18 minutes to save the world before your heart blows up. And in true roguelike fashion, every death sends you back to the beginning.
For all of its inspiration, the features of Black Future make it feel like a cyberpunk Dead Cells most of all. The roguelike structure and timer – albeit used in a different fashion. Stylish pixel art. Responsive 2D action. Procedurally generated levels and item drops, the likes of which you unlock more of for future runs as you progress.
These item drops are unsurprisingly crucial to your success. Firstly, there are around 50 weapons to find, covering the gamut from peashooter pistols to Gatling guns, rocket launchers and laser rifles. As you can only hold two at once, you’ll have to choose wisely.
What’s impressive is the creative quirks that many of the guns possess. A Night Nail, for instance, warps you to the enemy’s location when you shoot. The Sure Shot pistol sends laser bullets circling in homing paths towards your foe. A Ceramic Shotgun, on the other hand, will break apart when you run out of ammo.
Adding to this are a slew of buffs and curses you can earn. Buffs are simple and effective – increase your invincibility dash charges or bolster your defence against explosions, for example. Curses, on the other hand, provide double-edged bonuses often at the expense of incurring a penalty, like losing a chunk of your maximum health or 18-minute ‘Deadlock time.’ Receive too many curses, and your blood may get infected, causing it to explode and potentially kill you.
As if that wasn’t enough, buffs and curses are often traded using Deadlock time as currency. And stims can add further effects on top at the cost of money and further blood infection risk. And your weapons, buffs and curses can combine to create synergies with extra effects – or a weapon might become more powerful the more curses you receive.
It’s quite a dizzying stack of systems, like a teetering Bake Off showstopper layer cake in which each layer is a different flavour that perfectly complements the next. Even the character you choose at the beginning (there are five, four of which are unlocked through play) has their own strengths and weaknesses, like one which gets better weapons and can slow down time at the expense of their max health.
The levels themselves have plenty to uncover, too. In true post-Souls, roguelike fashion, Black Future doesn’t explain a great deal. There are switches you can flip, magic obelisks you can use and mysterious characters you can help or choose to be helped by – and you won’t know if the outcome will be positive until you try (hint: it sometimes isn’t).
Another trait of Black Future’s world – Skymelt it’s called, perhaps in a subtle throwback to Terminator – is that it’s a living, breathing entity in itself (well, sort of; it’s actually an AI). While your character upgrades itself over the course of a run, so can Skymelt. Any cash, ammo or health pickups you don’t swiftly collect are absorbed and raise Skymelt’s level, causing it to throw more enemies and hazards at you.
It’s all of these inventive touches in Black Future that raise its standard above a mere copy of its inspirations. There are pros and cons to the weapons and perks you choose to equip yourself with, and risks and rewards inherent to how you play. It keeps you on your toes and makes each run more exciting.
One of my main disappointments, however, is with how runs are actually structured. The levels are split into five distinct areas with bosses at the end of each. But reach the end and you travel back in time to the beginning to face earlier levels again – this time more deadly – while keeping your remaining Deadlock time. This feels anticlimactic after defeating the end boss for the first time – I’d have preferred a more typical linear structure with unique levels taking you to the final endpoint.
I also ran afoul of multiple crashes and other issues when playing the Switch version of the game. Three times the game froze when loading, one of which was during a good run. I also had another run brought to a screeching halt by getting stuck outside of the level boundaries. Thankfully, the framerate is at least consistently smooth, but I hope future patches make it a more stable experience overall.
Black Future ’88 may borrow ideas from all over, but it puts those ideas to good use and gives them a unique spin. As you’d expect it’s pretty challenging, but it’s worth mentioning that there’s an Assist Mode that makes it less deadly and more accessible. While you may want to hang fire on the Switch version until it’s less prone to crashing, this is otherwise an easy recommendation for roguelike-likers.
[Reviewed on Switch]