PS Vita at PSX – Seraphim Impressions

By 2 Old 4 Gaming

Seraphim was the first PS Vita game I played at PSX after meeting the developer, Ravenheart, after the PSX presentation. The game was clearly a labour of love. After working on the game for 4 years, I was seeing the game that’s only been running on the Vita for a week. Despite there being some lag in the gameplay, I was impressed with how much was achieved by one person and especially with the art of the game which had all been hand drawn by the game’s developer.

Seraphim is essentially a shooter. You play the character in the middle of the screen and shoot bullets at enemies from his six wings. You need to time your bullets to hit incoming enemies as they spin around you and get closer to you. To complicate matters, there are two rotating constellations that reflect your bullets. You need to time your bullets to avoid them being reflected back at you. You can activate a variety of power ups as you play each level and there are boss fights too.

Each stage has a specific objective, for example score 200 points or survive for 3 minutes and once you achieve the objective you unlock the next level, but you can also continue playing your current level until you die. The enemies get faster and faster and it gets pretty challenging the longer you survive.

As I mentioned, I was playing a very early Vita build. There was lag on the tutorial level that I played and on a boss level that was demoed for me, but the other levels played perfectly fine and the action got pretty intense at times. The art style was very unique and the game had some cool effects when power ups were activated.

The game has an arcade-y, addictive quality that sees you chasing high scores and competing with friends on online leaderboards. With levels taking just a few minutes to beat it seems like it will be a great fit for Vita when you’ve got a few minutes to spare.

The developer showed me the design document he put together and it showed just how much thought has gone into the game. It’s always great to meet a developer so passionate about the Vita and I’ll be watching out for Seraphim as it progresses in development.

Check out the Seraphim PS Vita Impressions: