Aeon Drive – Review

Aeon Drive is a speedrunner’s absolute dream. This side-scrolling 2D platformer by 2Awesome Studio is a game that immediately hooks you and never lets go.

Aeon Drive is an action platformer with a cyberpunk theme where you must be quick. With a fantastic visual design, great music and some of the tightest and most intuitive platformer controls ever, Aeon Drive is magnificent.

What is Aeon Drive

In Aeon Drive, you play as Jackelyne, a space ranger from another dimension. When her spaceship crashlands in Neo Barcelona, a busy metropolis, her Drive Cores get ejected to different parts of the city. To get back home, you need to get all the drive cores while also, casually saving the city.

With the help of your power sword, a dagger that allows you to teleport and the power to control time itself, you will have to be quick and ready for the challenges along the way.

With a visual design that harkens back the pixel graphics of the older days of gaming, Aeon Drive’s cyberpunk world is breathtaking to look at. And one of the best parts is that you don’t have to look at it alone. The game features up to 4 player coop which means a greater challenge and way more chaos.

Dashing through Neo Barcelona

The world of Aeon Drive is simply put- breathtaking (no, this isn’t a Cyberpuink 2077 reference). The pixel art is fantastic thanks to all the detail that has been put into it. From the background to the foreground and various particle effects, the game’s pixel art is consistently on point and great to look at.

Moreover, there’s also plenty of variety when it comes to level design. Level design is masterfully crafted. They give you the feel of speed and momentum while also adding in the challenge of dodging and fighting enemies.

And the way it achieves this is thanks to its core gameplay mechanics. You have your dash move to quickly get around, the ability to teleport by throwing your dagger to a wall and finally, the ability to control time itself. Mix all of that together and you’ve got all the tools you need to be the fastest person in Neo Barcelona.

Look and Feel

I’ve mentioned the visual art style and level design above but the way it all comes together is quite immersive. If you have a game that’s set in a cyberpunk world, you need to accompany it with some good cyberpunk music.

And oh boy does Aeon Drive have a great soundtrack. As someone who absolutely love synthwave and outrun music, I can’t tell you how pumped the music in this game got me. It’s the perfect match for not just the visuals but also the gameplay. You want to be fast and you won’t get satisfaction until you hit that leaderboard ranking. And the music is one of the things that keeps you going.

Final Verdict

Aeon Drive does something that I didn’t expect from it. It helped scratch that Katana Zero. It’s fast, it’s beautiful and it is addicting. I’m excited to see where this game goes from here.

Aeon Drive is out now for PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, Playstation 4, Playstation 5 and Nintendo Switch.