Not sure how many of you have Steam, or even a PC you use for gaming, but I got a Steam News notice about an indie games sale they currently have going on, and one of the entries that piqued my interest was Retro/Grade: a rhythm/shooter hybrid where you travel through time in reverse to preserve very fabric of the space/time continuum.

You play Rick Rocket, who just finished saving the universe from alien invaders. However, the destruction of the alien mothership has opened up a temporal anomaly, and now time is flowing in reverse! To preserve causality, you must replay though the epic battle Rick Rocket just finished, except backwards. So destroyed enemies reform in front of your eyes, and your bullets return to you requiring you to be in the right position to have fired them in the first place. Likewise, enemy bullets you already dodged come back at you from behind, returning to the ships that fired them. Any missteps slowly build towards a time paradox, but thankfully your ship is equipped with the ability to restore the correct flow of time for a short while, allowing you to go forwards again, giving you another chance to go backwards correctly.

Sounds a bit confusing? Tell me about it... explaining this game to people has been quite difficult. This gameplay video should help illustrate what you have to do:


The battles take place to the beat of music, in that you are "firing" your shots to match the music playing in your ship's stereo. Depending on the difficulty there's 3-5 rails your ship can be positioned on, which is where the rhythm part of this rhythm/shooter hybrid come in. The game has two control schemes, allowing for either the up/down arrows to move the ship between paths, or a specific button (Or... if you may... a fret on a guitar controller) assigned to each path. Both methods work quite well on a keyboard, although the latter is far more difficult. The game's website claims the game also supports pretty much any PS2/360/PS3/Wii guitar controller, and using one is definitely a treat. It's close enough to be familiar to people who have played Rock Band/Guitar Hero, but has a very distinct feel when you play it.

The whole game just gave off a retro feel for me, from the look and music right down to the frantic gameplay that while rhythm based doesn't leave you feeling like you're just playing along to a song. The songs (the two available are featured on the two gameplay videos) work very well and match the atmosphere of the game.

You can get the demo from the Steam link above or their website. Currently it's only for PC, and there's no mention of XBLA/WiiWare/PSN yet. The demo just has the Epilogue (tutorial) and levels 10 and 9, which could be quite the conundrum when you think about. Are levels 8-1 going to be easier, or are they going to try to explain why the "first" levels are harder than the "last"?