Funky Can Creative’s Popslinger is a great-looking game with some very cool ideas and a great premise.
However, as much as there is to like about Popslinger, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that it is more than a little rough around the edges.
Players take on the role of Ria, the titular Popslinger. The amnesiac hero of a world dripping with 90s charm, featuring a unique art style best described as Sailor Moon meets Saved by the Bell. If it was scrawled in the back of a bored higher school student’s maths book in maker pen.
It’s bright, fun and does a great job of drawing you into the world of Popslinger. There are tons of great little flourishes too – like seeing the squares of the notebook during the game lives in during its visual novel sections and random VHS tracking lines during its cinematics.
Ria is accompanied by Gin, the ghost of a former Popslinger who seemingly has fallen in battle against the hordes of colour-coded enemies Ria has to slay.
Popslinger starts in medias res, with Ria as confused as you are about the weird world she’s found herself in. Ria is, to put it bluntly – irritating. But thankfully, the primary gameplay loop is quite compelling.
Using her soda-powered bubble gun, Ria must dispatch all the enemies on screen the same way you clear blocks in a puzzle game like Columns or Bust-a-Move. Killing four monsters of the same colour lets you use a power-up. Although, most of these, aside from the shield, are useless. If you shoot another four enemies of the same colour you can heal yourself. (Pro tip: always try for the eight – its the only way to heal yourself, and you’ll always need it)
As you rack up kills, Popslinger’s future-funk soundtrack springs to life, with additional layers of sound added as your combo grows. When everything is in full swing, including the soundtrack, everything pops.
The problem is that getting into that flow is difficult to do and even harder to maintain because Ria can only shoot directly in front of her, and, as soon as you get hit, everything unravels very quickly.
The problem is that the enemies you face can shoot in every direction and a lot further than you can. They will also damage you if they merely bump into you (and they fucking will). On top of this, you can only take a few hits before you die.
It feels like Ria is out-gunned at every turn to the point where Popslinger feels less like a shooter and more like a brawler – where all your enemies have guns.
You can dodge, but it’s hard to judge where you will land, and it also takes just enough time to recharge to be mostly ineffective.
All the special attacks involve Gin popping out to either shoot some baddies or heal you. I would recommend the shield and the turret, but not the rest of them. The main problem is they all take time to perform, and you are vulnerable while you use them, even when healing.
This wouldn’t be a problem if enemies didn’t have a fun habit of swarming you from off-screen. So you’ll hit heal, get rushed, and probably end up worse off or dead.
It’s not so bad if you just attack every monster as it runs at you, but Popslinger, not just encourages, but demands you kill enemies in a certain order or you won’t survive very long.
The result is a game packed with great ideas, with gameplay that at best feels slightly off, and at its worst feels like a tedious chore.
It’s a shame because, with a few minor tweaks, Popslinger could be an absolute blast to play. It has a great sense of style, wonderful graphics, brilliant animation, and a strong voice cast (even if I’m not a massive fan of the characters). However, in its current state, Popslinger’s high points aren’t enough to stop my enthusiasm for it from fizzing out after a couple of hours.