Get Me Outta Here

Review

Who doesn’t love an unexpected hero? Especially when he is debonair and handsome.  Ok, here is the scenario . . . our hero is a short farmer, slightly chubby, bald on the top of his head, with a big moustache (which usually is the case when bald) and massive eyebrows; the typical Action Man as you would know him. He is in a predicament; aliens have abducted him.  You’ll find him lying on his back, in a deep sleep on an operating table in an alien spaceship, wearing only a hospital gown over his underwear; a rather alarming situation, shall we say? After waking up abruptly and gasping for air, he manages to take a weapon from the aliens, kill a few of them and move from room to room, until he hears a human voice. Overwhelmed with happiness, his facial hairs stick up in the air as if accidentally putting his fingers in a 240-watt powerpoint!  The joy was short-lived, however, as the orator tells him that the ship is full of enemies and he that he has only 2 minutes and 30 seconds to kill them all or been blown to pieces with them. I am sure you would agree with me, it is a moment of Get Me Outta Here!

Get Me Outta Here is retro-style action game developed and self-published by Rossman Bros Games on the 30^th of November 2019 on Steam and Nintendo Switch. The original game was released in 2017 on iOS.

The game consists of 3 spaceship escapes, but you you’ll have to clear the first one to unlock the other two.  There are 3 modes of play: Story mode, Co-op mode and Endless mode. What is interesting is the difficulty levels which you can set up yourself before starting one of your escapes. For that, you’ll need to choose between Less, Normal or More Damage on the first one. The second is the Health Bosses; will you choose Less, Normal or Raise Their Health?  And finally, for the last one, will you choose Less, Normal or More Enemies to spawn in the spaceship. Personally, I would start with the three options on the easy setting before moving on to the next; it’s just insanity on the maximum levels.

So, what happens next? Well, you’ll be in the room on the spaceship, which is fairly small. You can move your characters from left to right, climb up and down ladders, and jump from onto platforms. Your hero will be armed with a large alien weapon to kill enemies, and he can roll to avoid aliens coming towards him, and also jump over enemies’ projectiles.

In each level, you’ll have doors and various other openings where Aliens will appear. Some of the enemies will be floating within the level and shoot projectiles towards your characters. Others will rush towards him like a fly on a ?#@*, and still others will stand guarding a door. For the first minute, he will have to eliminate as many opponents as possible to rank up his combo but when the countdown reaches 1 minute and 30 seconds, a boss will arrive in a room; he’ll need to kill him before the time is over. If he does, and if there is still time on the clock, it will be added to the next 2 minutes and 30 seconds. This will provide him with more time to achieve bigger combos. Now, one thing I need to mention is that your hero will only be able to shoot up, down, right and left but can’t shoot diagonally. In any case, he has to beat five bosses before being rescued.

He will be hit over and over again, causing him to lose health, which is represented by the red gauge on the top left side of your screen. If the health gets too low, there is a green tank in the middle of the level. Get him into the tank to revitalise his health. After each time he uses the health tank, it will take around 30 seconds for him to be able to use it again. 

Nice pixel graphics and the game runs very well. Not too sure about the soundtrack but you can turn it on and off at your leisure. There is great humour in the game, even if the game is quite short. However, those 12 odds minutes can become longer, especially when you raise the levels of difficulty. In terms of controls, the game is attended to be played with a gamepad. You can use the Keyboard, but I strongly recommended that you do play with a gamepad.