Hands-On With Positron at Play Blackpool 2018

By Ashley Woodcock,

One of the many games on display within the Indie Zone in this year's Play Expo Blackpool event was Positron, a fast-paced arcade style racing game inspired by classic games of the 80's. I got the chance to get hands on with the game and try it out; for what looked to be a modern-day 3D version of Snake with a simple premise, I certainly got a bit more than I'd bargained for.

I began on one of the easier levels where the objective was to simply start the level in a maze and make it to the exit, which you can see in the distance thanks to a whirl of stars. I set off on a neon-style bike at a pretty decent pace. I couldn't stop the bike but I was able to turn at 90 degree angles left or right. A coloured trail would be left behind me as I progressed, and I had to make sure I didn't touch it if I ended up turning back on myself. The game is massively inspired by Snake, the very old-school game many of us will have undoubtedly played on our brick mobile phones back in the day.

After completing the first level, I thought that there wouldn't be much more to the game. However, the developer cranked up the gears a bit and sent me off on a much harder level. Without much visibility of the maze, I soon became wrapped up in my own trail, and was failing over and over again. Whenever I did get close to the exit, the walls and surroundings would become brighter in colour to showcase that I was on the right path. I still failed repeatedly, however, as I just couldn't remember the path I'd taken on my previous attempts at all. The key to success will depend on how good you are at memorising the mazes, as the mazes will stay the same, thankfully. If the mazes were randomly generated or changed in any way, many players would never get past some of the levels.

Puzzle lovers will be in for a treat with Positron, as the game will come with a whopping 120 levels that increase in difficulty as the player progresses. Different obstacles will eventually be introduced in the later levels and the mazes themselves will become much more complex. Be as quick as you can and try to set the best time on the leaderboards. You can take on the mazes in single player against A.I. opponents or multiplayer where you can do battle in split-screen. Players will fight it out against each other in a bid to be the last-man standing in 36 different levels, but multiplayer wasn't available at this time and the different range of power-ups in the game were not on display either.

For puzzle and old-school arcade lovers, the game is filled to the brim with hours worth of maze-filled, brain-working action. The game looks very pretty with bright 3D neon visuals and smooth gameplay, but you're definitely going to need patience and persistence if you're to make it through everything the game has to offer. You can see the game in action in this Steam launch trailer:

Positron will be coming to Steam on March 17th, 2018, and then to the PlayStation 4 in August 2018. According to the developer, the trophy list will be the same as the Steam achievement list.

Written by Ashley Woodcock

Hounding news for TrueTrophies ever since the site first launched. Lover of completions, tough achievements, shooters, action, adventure and racing titles, hip-hop, NBA, and my Scooby. I own an Xbox One and Xbox 360. If I ever get my gaming room back, and a whopping amount of constant free time to go with it, I may get a PlayStation console too.