Lithium City Review - Stylized Synthwave-Soaked Slay-fest

In my hectic thirties, Lithium City is exactly the kind of action game I find myself drawn to and enjoying: short, simple, polished, punishing but fair, and stripped-down to the barest minimum to emphasize clarity and precision even in the most hectic of situations. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of games played from an isometric perspective (they tend to give me Sonic 3D Blast flashbacks), but I do love my twin stick shooters, and Lithium City marries the two, to astonishingly potent results, with a simple neon graphical palette and even simpler controls (dash, attack, pick up weapon, throw weapon) ensuring that the game never gets in its own way.

Even among indie games these days, few titles have the confidence to drop their player into a wordless series of puzzle/death corridors and completely eschew any and all sense of character progression, skills, or any other RPG elements, relying on the polish of their gameplay mechanics and level designs to keep players hooked. 

Lithium City’s story is as simple as it is in the background, and it’s so sparse that all that I can say is that you play as some sort of enhanced or cybernetic long-legged buxom beauty who just so happens to be able to wield any weapon with expertise, and who can dash quickly three times in succession without a rest. Your character must indiscriminately kill her way through arrays of environments both below and above ground, making slow progress as the way forward will only be available once your environment is as dead as a doornail, and respawn points occur mostly at elevators, which may only occur at the end of several grueling rooms.

They’re Gonna Make A Supersonic Woman of You

While Lithium City starts off relatively simple enough, the difficulty soon gains momentum as you’ll be faced with rooms hosting multiple enemies behind closed doors, across barriers, at the end of conveyor belts, added as reinforcements, and armed with better weapons than what Tsunami, the deadly protagonist, shows up on the scene with (she can punch and kick, if unarmed).

Especially because you can often take two or more hits before dying, and your health does regenerate after a short while, it sometimes feels like the ability to dash willy-nilly gives you a tad too much breathing space, but dashing won’t always help you, and it often isn’t the right solution – in Lithium City’s tight corridors, you can find yourself stuck against an odd corner or background element, or trapped between several enemies who can combo you to death. Yes, you can be comboed and killed while in hitstun, leading to a ton of scary situations and forcing the player to look before they leap, and to properly assess their combat options rather than relying on sheer reflexes alone (though sometimes you can zip around and get the job done without forethought, often the intelligent approach is the best one).

The AI is simple to the point of being an afterthought for the player, although elite groups of enemies do split up to flank you, and the speed at which firearm-toting foes will flambé you is enough to make you think twice before attempting to take most of them head-on. There are pipes, knives, sabres, pistols, magnums, shotguns, grenades, automatic pistols, mini-guns, and even Tron-like light discs, among other wonders, and while the game does mix up its challenges, carefully building upon its core concepts throughout, it never wastes the player’s time, and almost as soon as you’ve mastered a technique, you’ll be whisked off to the next floor and have to deal with a different set of action-puzzles.

Simple and Clean, Yet Satisfying

Lithium City exists in the same vein as recent indie titles such as Furi, Hyper Light Drifter, and the Hotline Miami games – it is an atmospheric, no-frills, top-down action title, with an emphasis on precise combat decisions and precisely-tuned encounter design. If you found yourself enjoying either of those games, I’m pretty sure you’d find a lot to like in Lithium City. The only things preventing me from awarding it a perfect score are its short length, the third dash being a bit unnecessary and making some situations too easy, and the lack of replay value. I would have loved extras to complete once I’d finished the game, such as harder difficulty modes, Time Attack modes, VR missions, and extra bosses.

As I mentioned, the presentation is slick and professional.  Composer John Camara’s synth-heavy soundtrack matches the game perfectly, building slowly at the start, then layering the sounds on as the action gets more and more intense. The soundtrack is available to download online. Developer Nico Tuason endeavored to provide a simple but effective visual experience to match the sleekness of the gameplay, taking the ‘less is more’ philosophy to heart and delivering a visual experience that won’t win any prizes, but conveys the game’s action capably, with even the most intense lighting effects not providing any slowdown or keeping the player from being able to parse what’s taking place onscreen.

Despite its short length (I clocked in at 4 hours, but your mileage will vary depending on how well-versed you are in these types of games), for hardcore action aficionados, I feel there’s a lot to recommend Lithium City, a title that reminded me of the simpler days, back when action titles were less about the power fantasy, and more about limiting player options and forcing them to adapt to sets of carefully-crafted challenges.

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8/10

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Highlights

+ Nonstop corridor-clearing action with an evolving series of challenges and a constant stream of new enemy types and weapons from beginning to end

+ Killer electronic soundtrack gets you pumped and going

- No replay value or extra modes

- Quite short - depending on your skill level, it will take between 3 and 5 hours to complete

What I’ve Played

• Beat the game (4 hours of gameplay)

[This review is based on a Steam code provided by Games by Nico.]

Lithium City is now available on Steam.

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