Waves Out is small game about using magnetism. I hesitate to classify the genre as I’m not sure what it would be. In the game you have to transport spheres to goal holes as each world gets progressive harder. Each level has around three rounds with a timer counting down. If you don’t get enough spheres in the holes in time, you have to restart.
There are three different ‘worlds’ which have four levels each, but they’re just slightly varied versions of the same level. That coupled with the rounds makes the game very repetitive, even with the variance. The last two levels somewhat deviate from this, but I doubt most people will get to that point. The score goals are way too easy to achieve for almost the entirety of the game, so much so that I often found myself standing around in the last round as you can continue to score even after you’ve achieved your goal for that round. Not only that, but each level has up to three stars you can get for extra spheres and I got all three half the time. There are also powerups to help, but they’re not really needed. There are also goals that offer two times or four times points, but you again you don’t really need them.
The time trial idea really holds the game back, discouraging you from even going to collect powerups. Towards the of the game at the last two levels there’s an attempt at a longer level, but I’ll tell you that getting stuck in the floor on the third part and having to restart from the beginning of the level all over again was pretty frustrating. The game would have been better if there was no time component at all and instead a set number of spheres needed to open up the next part of the level. As it stands everything that gets added to increase the difficulty it either not fun or doesn’t make the game that much harder anyway.
That’s about all there is to the game. There’s a two-player mode, but I doubt you could get anyone to play this with you. There’s also a time trial mode, but the core gameplay makes it not worth playing.
The only good thing about this game is the magnetism idea. Even then, I not sure if the way I’m using it is intended, as I often mash the button to keep the spheres sticking to me without overloading, although you do need to hold the button down for a bit to drag spheres up slopes. The fact that you have to walk over them to activate them before putting them in the goal is fine, but like everything else in the game the challenge of it is basically irrelevant most of the time.
Overall, I wouldn’t really recommend this game to anyone unless you really like magnets for some reason. The game’s short, the gameplay’s boring and there’s no story. I could also mention other things like how the music in the main menu isn’t very good and a couple of the glitches I saw, but I think you get the picture.
