Hopefully, everyone who reads this has had a good holiday and New Year, but it’s back to games (and trying to become a teacher). I have been browsing Steam’s demo library and man is it dry. Maybe I hit the point where the dry season of games is in full swing.

Porn games and PC adaptations of phone puzzle games are what floods Steam.

Anyway, this week I played a game where the player is a killing machine that is also addicted to soda. This week is Soda Crisis.

Soda Crisis is a side-scrolling shooty game from Team Soda published by Bilibili. It’s going to release on PC but currently has no release date.

I honestly do not know what is happening in this game. You are an experimental soldier that is tasked with something in exchange for cola and then, for whatever reason, some goons try to take you out and it is time to run and gun.

The game is reminiscent of the recent My Friend is Pedro, where acrobatics is flashy and killing bad guys is super fun. Movement is fluid. The soldier guy is incredibly fast on their own and with the inclusion of a sprint key, they are even faster. They are also given a dodge and a grappling which just increases the speed at which traversal is possible. The experimental man can shoot left right and up, that’s it.

Areas are broken up into smaller sections as opposed to longer sections. The “rest” area usually has some sort of power-up, an area to customize abilities and weapons, and a refresh of health.

Combat arenas are pretty generic, nothing fantastic. Onboarding is done relatively well. Teaching the player the ins and outs of combat and traversal. Enemies are littered around the area and only completing the area is necessary and other times eliminating enemies is what stands between you and the exit.

There are a lot of enemy types featured in the demo. There are your generic shooty men, a ninja melee guy, robots that fly at you and explode, a stationary sniper bot, a sniper, and the list just keeps going. All of these enemy types really show off all of the combat patterns that the player has to make to be successful in an area.

Power-ups are pretty varied. The soda addict good guy is given a weapon and a utility to be able to upgrade. Upgrades vary from fire rate and damage to Metal Slug-related split shot and health can be upgraded, if you have the energy to do so.

The audio is really loud, so as a forewarning, turn down the volume before loading the game. The soundtrack is absolute fire. Moving and killing bad guys to this super awesome soundtrack feels really good.

The game looks surprisingly good as well. It is really crisp and everything works really well. Some serious stuff is going on in the backdrop as you move to escape the lab and, at times, even references the backdrop, which all look really good.

This demo is incredibly long too. I played Soda Crisis for just over 45 minutes. Soda Crisis is a really solid game so far and I am hyped for when it gets a release date. It never feels like it is that difficult, which may or may not be an issue. Shooting bad guys is always fun but when you are sprinting, grappling, and just moving so god damn fast, it is a really fun game.