Review | Steel Defier

Originally published at: Review | Steel Defier - XboxEra

Steel Defier is a $5 id@xbox game I installed on a whim. It featured a weird-looking white guy on the cover, and the screenshots looked straight out of an early 2000s computer learning class on how to make video games. Oddly enough the game’s protagonist and only character is a person of color, which doesn’t match the game’s cover art. You are a man hell-bent on jumping past obstacles in perfectly square rooms so that he can “escape” a space prison, how exciting!

Steel Defier has two modes, campaign, and survival. Campaign finds you moving through progressively more difficult rooms as you unlock new abilities to deal with the extra dangers you’ll encounter. The game is played from a nearly ¾ perspective looking down over a square room. You are an odd-looking 2D pixel man who can jump quite high. Your task in every single room is to gather 15 computer chips while avoiding being hit by moving rows of boxes. The controls feel surprisingly good for a game of this budget, which based on the graphics and audio was most likely $50 to get assets off of the Unity or Unreal stores.

Over time different-looking boxes, pyramids, and other geometric shapes will attempt to one-shot you into oblivion. Upgrades include a double jump, dash, run, and more. In the end, you can beat the entire game the instant you get the slowdown time ability, as it makes gathering the computer chips a breeze. Playing through the campaign and making sure you clear every room gets you all but one achievement. To get the last simply head over to the survival mode and last until you have earned 50 data chips and you’re done!

This game also has one of the nicest written and most heartfelt game completion messages I have ever read, so I included it below.

Wrapping Things Up

I beat the game and earned all 1000g in roughly 25 minutes of playtime. For $5 it’s an easy sell for achievement hunters out there, and one of the better playing achieve games I’ve played.

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The main review has a couple of galleries in it for more screenshots

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