Omega Warp is a fun Metroidvania that’s a celebration of science fiction

There’s a distinct lack of video games based solely within the confines of space ships. Yes, we’ve had games based on large sprawling space stations – looking at you, Alien: Isolation and Dead Space – but, I like to think to think that we need more games based in ships as they make a great setting for horror and action. Brazilian studio Cian Games has finally satiated my desire with Omega Warp, whose greatest strengths and weaknesses both stem from its sci-fi setting.

Taking inspiration from sci-fi media before it, Omega Warp is set on the ISE Horizon Prime interstellar freighter, which has lost communication with Earth and become a hotspot for alien and rogue robot activity. A repair crew are sent to the freighter to investigate the loss of communication but face betrayal, the plague of robots and aliens infesting the ship, and a whole lot of locked doors and long corridors.

The game’s premise is familiar and treads on common sci-fi storytelling ground, and Cian Games disappointingly doesn’t do much to shake things up. But as self-confessed sci-fi nerd, I very much enjoyed uncovering what had happened on the ship, even if the narrative felt a little barebones at times – I found the occasional English grammar issue in the game’s dialogue text which didn’t both me, but Cian Games has already taken steps to improving them.

The game’s story is told through conversations between your player character – either Lana or Stean – and NPCs consisting of ship survivors or your team members. You’ll also find logs that add some lore, but most consist of item location hints or PIN codes that you’ll need to use to unlock doors for exploration or uncover quest items. I would have loved a deeper look into the running of the ISE Horizon Prime, and I feel this could have given the game’s unsettling atmosphere a further boost.

Gameplay consists of you travelling around the freighter’s six decks – Cargo, Hydroponics, Engineering, Operations, Crew, and Command – room by room in a Metroidvania manner while searching for three to four key items hidden in cabinets and lockers that are needed to fix each respective deck’s technology, solve quests, and move the story forward.

The ship itself is a fantastic, drab, metallic set piece that takes heavy inspiration from 80s and 90s sci-fi epics, and is exactly what I hoped from the game. The decks are visually distinctive; Hydroponics is filled with plantlife, Operations is home to shelves of robots, and Command is a metallic cesspool of bathrooms and living quarters.

The decks are mostly fun to explore, with plenty of rooms to explore – in some ways, an explorer’s nightmare as a lot of backtracking is needed. This actually resulted in one of my only frustrations with the game as there is no fast travel system and the later half of the game requires you to return to each of the decks to complete objectives, forcing you to tread the same empty or enemy-infested hallways and corridors, many of which offer little to no reason to revisit unless you’re in desperate need to pick up the bountiful health kits.

Enemy variety is low. You’ll mostly face off against small and large red alien monsters, some of which can crawl on the ceiling, jump, or injure you by touch with their spiked bodies, but I enjoyed their varied design. Cian Games thankfully mixes things up with the inclusion of melee and ranged androids and humans. It never feels like enough, though, and having to fight the same enemies through similar-looking hallways and corridors, as well as bosses that are oversized versions of regular enemies, dampens the experience a little.

Combat provides a bit of a challenge. Not because it’s hard, but because the game has no aiming or lock-on system. You’re forced to shoot only immediately ahead, which means you’ll need to crouch to successfully hit smaller enemies, jump to hit giant enemies or those crawling along the ceiling, and aim correctly to hit larger or further away targets.

Cian Games manages to remedy this by adding several different weapon types that you can unlock through exploration: a spray-like shotgun to hit larger enemies and ceiling aliens, traditional plasma guns, rifles, and more. The game game provides you with infinite ammo for these basic weapons as indicated by a bar in the top-right corner of the screen. Depleting it causes your weapon to lock for several seconds during which it refills. The advanced weapons – missile and grenade launchers amongst others – use limited ammo that you can scavenge across the freighter.

Basic weapons can also be customised at workbenches found throughout the game to deal different damage types that select enemies are weak to, encouraging you to swap between weapons depending on the situation. Although I found this difficult to do on the Steam Deck due to limited controls, it adds a fantastic layer of strategy to the game, which is also elevated by the lack of save point machines – the only way to save your progress. These are scattered around the six decks but are few and far between, forcing you to make decisions on when to attack enemies or save ammo and health and retreat.

To make things easier, Omega Warp incorporates an XP system, wherein defeating an enemy or boss awards XP, which can be used to level up your health, ammo level, and endurance for abilities. These abilities certainly helped elevate the game, granting you the ability to temporarily erect a shield against enemy attacks and fire, jump to out-of-reach locations, and run, which is a welcomed upgrade from the game’s slow walking animation for the early game.

Throughout my experience with the game, I ran into zero bugs or issues, even on Steam Deck – Omega Warp isn’t completely optimised for the device but worked fine, albeit some controller issues. The game’s level of polish has to be commended as, in today’s age, you rarely find a game that launches without issues.

Ultimately, Omega Warp is a fun and entertaining sci-fi romp. It makes some questionable decisions in its design but provides a unique Metroidvania experience that focuses on establishing a slower pace where you’re required to plan ahead. it’s a celebration of the science fiction genre, and offers a great but short and sweet experience.

Review copy provided by Cian Games for PC via Steam.

Omega Warp is out now for PC with a free demo.