Developer Wildboy Studios and publisher tinyBuild have brought the arcade experience to your home with their latest release, Nitro Kid. That’s at least what it felt like to me. I can easily imagine someone playing this game with a joystick and two buttons, hunched over staring at a tiny screen. I love the retro feel of the game as well as the music. The interface is also super accessible and easy to understand. To me, the game is pretty straightforward – until it isn’t…
Nitro Kid is a strategy-based game, meaning you can’t just brute force your way to the end. Every encounter, patch, card – any decision really – will affect how far you get. I got that in the beginning because it’s also a turn-based game, but I didn’t really get it until I was at 20 hp with no way to heal with an elite encounter and boss battle still to go. So, as long as you play to your characters strengths and weaknesses, you should be good.
At the beginning of the game, you play as L33. Luckily enough for me, L33 does have a healing card (though it’s not for much) that is a lifesaver for players like me. I am a brute force player; I dive in headfirst and usually think later. I also prefer big damage and short-term success rather than longevity, which was my downfall in this game. You get the choice to upgrade patches and buy new cards through the shop. This means you can further build your deck or continue with the cards you have and give yourself a different advantage through patches. Patches are essentially buffs like “Gain 3 shields when you enter a fight” or “Apply 3 weak to adjacent opponents”. Instead of picking cards that would aid me in the long-run, I chose whichever cards had bigger numbers, which to my defense worked in my first run. However, it didn’t for the two other characters to be unlocked as of now: J4X and K31.
The next character I unlocked was J4X, who in my eyes, is a brute. So, I thought, great! Now I can actually brute force my way through this; he has way more health. I soon found out that I was wrong. I actually died quicker using J4X than I did L33. He has an entirely different playstyle from L33, which means he has entirely different cards and patches he can benefit from. The problem that I kept running into with J4X was that it felt like he didn’t have enough attack cards. 50% of the time I was either using my energy to shield myself or “goad” enemies, which wasn’t something I wanted to do considering I lost health pretty quickly. I think my favorite part of playing J4X, though, was that he could counter. It was a similar mechanic that some of the enemies have – every time you get hit, you can counter and hit the enemy back. My least favorite part would be the combo locked card (partially my fault for buying it), but I couldn’t, for the life of me, get a combo of 8 to use it. Using shields or any non-attack cards don’t add to your combos, and combos don’t carry over, so I was stuck. And since it was a Hold card, it stayed in my hand until I used it – which I never got the chance to.
After my short-lived run with J4X, I played with K31, a female gunner. I think I would’ve been more excited for her if I hadn’t felt so demoralized after my run with J4X. That being said, I really enjoyed playing with her and being able to attack enemies from a distance. I got a little farther with her but not as far as I did with L33 as she has the least amount of health of three. I think if I had a little more health – either through patches or encounters – I could’ve made it about the same.
Besides the differences with the characters, there’s also a bit of lore. I hadn’t realized this because I wasn’t checking the codex, but each time you defeat a boss or an elite enemy, new information about them is added to the codex. Initially, when the text saying that popped up, I had thought it was the base text that pops up after you defeat them. Thankfully, I was wrong because I love when little things like that are added to the game. It gives me something to look forward to. Something else I could’ve looked forward to, had I been better at the game, would be leveling up my characters. There’s a base loadout each of them starts with, and the more you level up the more you can unlock and help them advance through the levels. If you intend on playing this game a lot, I personally think it’d be helpful to stick with one character and max them so you can have their full loadout.
Overall, I enjoyed Nitro Kid. I most enjoyed playing as L33 and K31. I don’t think that this game will be everyone’s cup of tea, especially if you aren’t looking to strategize the moment you click start. Personally, I could not see myself playing this after a long day of work, but I definitely do see its appeal. With that being said, I’d rate it 7/10. Also, I recommend joining the Discord to interact with players better than myself and see just how well and how far you can get.
Nitro Kid releases tomorrow, October 18, 2022, for PC via Steam. You can wishlist it right now.
Related: Reviews by Maryanne Fadonougbo
"I've enjoyed gaming since I was little, playing games like Pokémon, Rayman, and Naruto every day. Besides that though, I've always had a love for writing. Now I am combining the two for the best of both worlds! My ultimate goal is to do narrative design for video games."
More Stories
RUMBLE CLUB Review for Steam
Another Crab’s Treasure Review for PlayStation 5
NIS America Announces September 27 Release Date for Action-packed Magical RPG REYNATIS