Review: Astro Aqua Kitty

I guess the milk mines ran dry as the Aqua Kitty force have headed into space, with an asteroid field full of opportunity for gaming's coolest cats. Astro Aqua Kitty expands on the pure Defender-style shooter of the 2014 original with a mission-based blast through expansive tunnels within the space rocks, occupied by increasingly fractious aliens and rabbity space pirates. 

Fun fact, some real asteroids are worth trillions! So, consider this a simulator for your kids when space mining is a real thing. 

From the off, there's a choice of crew to tweak the stats of the good ship vessel, across agility, firepower and energy. There's nothing radical between the crews, but enough to create some options, especially if played in permadeath mode where every ounce of power counts. Note, there are five save slots, so we can mix-and-match our approaches. 

The first asteroid, "Dropsite" is pretty much a milk run, showing how to choose primary and secondary weapons as power-ups are picked up, and upgrading stats. A store also offers some cargo, and as the crew's experience level rises, there are skills to equip from a list of 10, including Seeker Bots, Instant Repair and other essentials. 

Finally from the options pages, the map will show where to go and highlight explored territory, and likely help find that one passage when getting lost in the larger asteroids later on. Exploring is great fun, hugging the walls to avoid fleets of ships, picking them off using the terrain to protect the ship and learning the perils that lurk within caves and fissures. 

Explore strange new rocks

Each main objective usually blocks off part of the map, so we need to fetch pilots, batteries and other bits and pieces to drive the plot along. Each mission is pretty quick, but there are plenty of them and the constant urge to explore and see what's out there is a constant driver. 

Nuisance enemies soon give way to bigger, bulkier ships with missiles and plenty of armour, as well as natural enemies that really object to our presence. Here we need to manage those energy levels and figure out the best attack pattern to avoid flaming death, and have the right extras equipped to stay in the fight. 

Each battle becomes a tactical scrap, finding the right weapon (powerful weapons have shorter ranges or chew through energy) or a gap in the scenery to avoid the worst of their wrath. Even if we clear an asteroid, new enemies pop up to provide harassing fire, as we tidy up the last quests or look for any bonus items tucked away in the darker corners. 

Light 'em up

As with Aqua Kitty, the presentation is top notch, from the dance-tinged anthems that soundtrack each asteroid to the clever use of light that pop off the OLED. Jets of flame blaze out of fissures, lights blink in the bases 

There are gorgeous designs for each creature and ship, with plenty of familiar faces popping up over the game, and endless detail, especially looking in the screenshots which players don't often have time to enjoy as we bomb through and get buried in the action. 

With the RPG-elements and the wider expanse of asteroids to explore, Astro Aqua Kitty loses a little of the intensity of its predecessor. The ability to save regularly also removes that feeling of dire peril, unless played in permadeath mode. 

Even so, there's enough new stuff on each level to keep pushing forward and while I guess it would be cool if we could see the upgrades on the main vessel, everything else is finely polished with glorious visual effects and well-honed gameplay. 

It is a shame there's no cross buy with the PS4/5 thanks to Sony's arsing around, but Astro Aqua Kitty is a game to enjoy on any platform, and perfectly formed on the Vita. 

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Developer TikiPod

Price: £9.99 (PSN)

Score: 9/10

Progress: Mine all mine