Disaster Blaster is a lot more cerebral than it looks.
Despite its unsubtle name and clear love of exploding buildings, Disaster Blaster is actually something of a slow burn. It took me several runs to fully understand what kind of game was tucked under its candy-colored, retro-graphics, planet-destroying facade. Once you start to peel back its layers, there’s entertaining depth tucked within its deceptively simple systems.
Despite looking like a frenetic action game, Disaster Blaster actually strips you of all direct control. Your character, a twitchy little shock-haired weirdo with a penchant for destruction, automatically sprints and leaps to the right, blazing rounds at everything that stands in his path, from snapping cyan sharks to looming skyscrapers. Your task is to choose upgrade cards for your blaster, which determine everything from how much damage it does to how quickly it fires, as well as adding elemental boosts or other effects.
As you begin to learn how cards work together and amplify each other, you’ll discover combinations that turn your blaster from an underpowered pea-shooter into a world-destroying weapon of mass destruction. It’s deeply satisfying to watch your character go from taking multiple pot shots to dispatch tiny enemies to firing incinerating bolts that engulf entire city blocks in nuclear fire.
Like Oppenheimer, you’ll unleash world-ending annihilation through the magical power of math. By combining base damage increases, multipliers, and recursive cards that repeat the effects of previous cards in the sequence, you’ll begin to turn out astonishing amounts of carnage with every shot.
The game gives you a hand by showing you a preview of how much placing a card in a certain slot will affect your total damage. Late in runs, the numbers can grow so high that the preview changes from a number to just giant text that says “REALLY??”. Now that’s satisfying.
That said, the game has systems in place to ensure that you can’t just steamroll every planet. Sometimes when your character gets hit, instead of deducting a heart, one of your cards will be randomly shattered. This is especially punishing if the card in question is a crucial multiplier or repeat card, which can immediately strip multiple digits off of your damage number.
There’s also enough enemy variety to demand that you vary up your tactics as you make your way through each level. While a rapid fire blaster with bullets that pass through and damage multiple enemies is a good fit when you’re getting swarmed, it’s next to useless against a few larger enemies. Conversely, a blaster that spews powerful single shots may have the opposite problem.
You’ll stack points as you make your way through each level, which are then translated into currency when you finish a run (whether you were successful or not). You can spend your cash to unlock new planets to dominate, upgrade existing characters or purchase new ones, or buy access to new skill cards that will then appear in subsequent levels.
The downside of this system is that it’s mostly random. You won’t see any details of new characters before you unlock them, and skills are unlocked blind box style, so you never know what you’re going to get. In fact, other than a suggestive icon, you won’t be able to see what the skill you’ve unlocked does until it shows up in a run.
Disaster Blaster also has a number of other rough edges, particularly around presentation. It’s hardly a looker, with graphics reminiscent of the Commodore 64 era, minus the retro charm. Also, the music is completely unbearable. After one full run of listening to its carnival-style thumping and wheezing, I was hustling to the settings menu to find the mute option.
That said, if you’re looking for a quick hit of dopamine by way of planetary destruction, and especially if you like the idea of exploiting mathematical synergies to achieve it, Disaster Blaster presents a satisfying roguelite loop designed to feed your brain a steady drip of delicious chemicals. It’s available on Steam now, and there’s even a free demo if you want to give it a try.
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