Caverns of Mars: Recharged Logo
Caverns of Mars: Recharged Icon
Caverns of Mars: Recharged

Developer: SneakyBox

Publisher: Atari

Action
Budget
Family
Retro
Arcade
  • Price: $9.99
  • Release Date: Mar 9, 2023
  • Number of Players: 1 - 2
  • Last on Sale: -
  • Lowest Historic Price: -
  • ESRB Rating: E [Everyone]
Videos
Reviews:
  • Though certainly an improvement from its humble original incarnation, against a very similar indie it doesn’t measure up

    Having been a fan of most of the Recharged glow-ups that have been done with classic Atari catalog titles, I was intrigued to see this one since I don’t recall having ever seen the original on old-school Atari computers. Given what I’ve seen of the original, and its very simple nature, there was no doubt a significant task in trying to take those bones and make something more notable. My problem is that playing it I immediately realized I recognized the style of play, which is disturbingly similar to another indie roguelike title I originally played on mobile called Downwell. Now, it isn’t unusual for games to share some DNA, and considering my love for Downwell I’m not shocked that other games could try to mimic its style. My bigger issue is that aside from aesthetics the big differentiator between the two is simply that Recharged lacks depth and ambition, at best being a shadow of the other without surpassing or even taking another meaningful route with the gameplay hook. Truly, if you’ve got this on your list of games to check out be sure to look into Downwell and compare first. Recharged is visually a bit more attractive, to be sure, but I’d argue where it counts in differences per run and diversity of power-ups in particular this one comes up short by comparison.


    Justin Nation, Score:
    Good [7.1]
2024

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