varStudios has been developing visually stunning vector-style games for some time. Games like Neon and Lumination put them on the map for as some of the best mouse-busting game designers in the web-game industry.

Abstract Sea, their latest game, continues the tradition of stunning your eyes and busting your mouse.

I REALLY wanted to love this game. As a designer myself, I really can appreciate the overall style of this game, and fired it up with high hopes.

What I found was a game that certainly delivered artistically, but fell a bit short in the fun department.

The game is straight monotone color. Everything is all on the play area, from battleships to the score display, nothing is segregated. The explosions look very cool with the spinning boxes that fly off of enemy ships as you blast them into the sea, and all the alpha effects just look great. The game is just gorgeous.

Even the sound is great. The music isn’t really anything special, but the effects really help the game. Your bullets make no sound unless they hit something, which is a huge help when you are evading and firing at the same time.

You can watch your own boat while listening to the sounds. If your bullets go quiet, you know can move your attention to aiming for a split second, then resume a defensive watch. Not a lot of games use sound to this degree, and it’s just another thing that made me want to love this game.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is simply a recycled single screen 360 degree shooter game. There’s not a huge variety in the weapons you can get, although this may be due to the simplistic vector style art. There is a good AMMOUNT of weapons, but they don’t really FEEL all that unique, and the single color blocks used to represent your bullets is probably the reason for this.

The other thing that gets old is the variety in enemies. I think there are severl types of boat, but in the frantic assault they all tend to look the same and only vary in minor ways such as overall armor and the amount of shots they can fire.

I tried to give this game a long thorough play, and I really did have fun with it for a few minutes. But after the initial enjoyment wore off, and the variety screeched to a halt, I just got bored and let the enemy ships sink me.

I think this is still a good game to waste time with, but beyond killing a few minutes, there’s not much to this game to keep you coming back.

[ Play Abstract Sea ]