ProjectSD1

Space is one heck of a scary place, xenomorphs or not. Consisting of a deadly vacuum, absolutely massive in scope and scale, it’s a wonder anyone would want to put their life at risk to navigate its inky blackness.

Unfortunately for the scientists and engineers in ProjectSD1, the allure of exploring the depths of space was their doing. The remains of their fleet float aimlessly, only to be salvaged by a utility robot.

A small, crap-looking utility robot, it should be said, armed with dodgy controls and a flagrant disregard for physics. They called it Project Stardust-1 - we call it something unprintable.

Looking like Wall-E’s poor cousin that was scrapped at the prototype stage, your nameless robot has all of three animation frames, so get used to him nodding his head a lot as he scoots along the platforms that make up the ship.

I call it a ship - and so does the game. It says so on the level select screen. But there’s very little to actually indicate that you are, indeed, walking on a damaged spacecraft. The graphics are gray and undefined, like a watercolour painting of a concrete bollard.

Since this is a platformer of the most traditional kind, repairing the nondescript ship consists of picking up blue gears hidden in each of the game’s 30 levels.

Of course, there's an array of obstacles meant to impede collection: electricity conduits that flick out like clockwork, flaming fireball turrets (because every spaceship comes equipped with these), and gargantuan fans, presumably for cutting up utility robots as they try to repair your ship.

The presentation and innovation may be lacking, but it’s the controls that will really grind your gears.

Movement is handled by tapping the sides of the screen, with the top corners used to jump diagonally. There's no vertical jump - I’ll just leave that information up there for you to stew over.

Making matters worse is the way the controls are handled. Every move has to be tapped or held down - you can’t just slide your finger up from moving left, say, and expect it to result in a jump. It’s awkward. clumsy, and half the time doesn’t even register your commands anyway.

If you do manage to get it working, your idiot robot has a habit of rolling in a random direction after landing from a high fall - sometimes off the side of a platform to his death. He wants you to love him - he just doesn’t know how.

I did enjoy the introductory cinematic, as it sets the scene nicely, and on those rare occasions where the controls weren’t driving me mad I found myself only disliking the graphics and level design instead.

So while I’d still likely pick Project Stardust-1 over dying in a vacuum, it’d be a close call.