The story in Project Nimbus is actually better than I was expecting. Considering the budget the cut-scenes and voice acting are pretty good and has plenty of voice work in-game. Controlling your mech is a breeze, and shooting enemies with a mix of short-range machine gun fire, long-range missiles, and more is fast and frantic. You have complete 3 dimensional movement, so dodging to the side or moving vertically up or down give a real sense of space and speed. There’s even a bullet time mechanic that allows you to slow time in order to better concentrate fire on the enemy or evade their bullets; this is particularly helpful since one issue I had was that when there is a lot of enemies it’s difficult to evade their attacks.
Project Nimbus has been in Early Access on Steam since November last year and has had a positive response, but what’s really impressed me is the fact that the developers have taken feedback on board. For example, people in the forums mentioned that machine gun fire was too hard to see so they fixed that by making them bigger. I personally called out the fact that fighting enemies from a large distance did not feel that satisfying so the developers introduced a zoom box showing a close-up of any enemy that you’re locked on to.
With Project Nimbus the the developers are planning a 4 act campaign, but as of this writing you can only play the entire first campaign and two missions from the second. It is well priced at 14.99 euro (about $16) but I think it needs to be more of a game. Once you go through the missions and experience the story there isn’t much to bring you back into the game, which hurts the replay value. If the developers were to add a ranking system on how well you complete the levels and combine that with items that can be unlocked and secrets I really do think they would be onto a winner.
I have done a video about the game on YouTube from one of the more recent builds of the game compare it to some of my older videos and it will give you a example on how far the game has come.
Project Nimbus does have some great moments: boosting to an enemy and slowing down time in order to take them out with a rail gun then quickly switching to machine guns to shoot down the missile they fired is a great thrill. The full release is schedule for August of this year, so there’s still time to improve this already promising game.
