Satellina Review: Synthpop Particle Play

(Note: This review is based on the pre-release Android review .apk of the game.)

With patterns of green, yellow, and red particles moving around the screen in sync with a catchy synthpop soundtrack, Satellina (not to be Google-confused with SuicideGirls’ model Satelina) is a sharp mix of free-to-play swipe-and-tap rhythm game Osu! with the stark, almost retro minimalism of Pong.

Peter Malamud Smith, the face behind Satellina developer Moon Kid, was one of the two driving forces behind the NES-style Great Gatsby game which managed to make news a few years back. 

Boasting 50 different levels, “a challenging but rewarding (and never punitive) difficulty curve,” and a timed structure designed for speedrunning, Satellina relies heavily on quick reflexes, pattern-recognition, and puzzle-solving in order to progress. 

The objective in this game is simple – drag your finger around your screen to collect only the green dots without bumping into either the yellow or the red. Once collected, the yellow dots turn green and the red dots turn yellow. You complete the level by clearing them all.

How you do this is where things start to get a little difficult.

While each level contains a different pattern of moving particles, they all move in such a way that it is consistently easier to swipe the cursor right rather than left.

Either way you choose to make your swiping motions, these movements make it much more complicated to hold onto the cursor, swipe, and still see where you’re going as the patterns move beneath your finger. (This will affect you whether you are more comfortable playing right-handed versus left-handed.) 

To get around this, the tutorial offers another solution right off the bat – you can touch and hold any part of the screen in order to move the cursor from its original starting position. 

For example, in the screenshot above, touching your finger on the area that has been starred (star added for illustration) versus the actual crosshair cursor means that you will be able to move and draw your design without covering up necessary parts of the screen. This is especially helpful for those of us playing without a stylus (i.e. the majority of mobile users) and quickly becomes a necessity as you move down through the level difficulties.

Red/Green Colorblind Mode

In spite of Satellina’s deceptively simple premise, this game was not made for everyone – at least at first. After the game’s initial announcement, feedback trickled in from people with red/green color vision deficiency.

To address this issue, Satellina‘s developer added an alternate, colorblind-friendly palette to the game as seen below.

This was not available in the review .apk that I played, but it is available now in its worldwide iOS release.

Look & Feel

Satellina is a pleasure to play. Neat and elegantly simple, this game holds possibilities for both casual players merely interested in finishing the level (“Just hold the cursor there and the green dots will move into it eventually”) and for those who want finishing the level as fast as humanly possible (“Spin it now. Now now now now NOW!!”).

Most of the possible issues or concerns I might have had with play were already noticed and addressed long before I touched this game, but I continue to have the lingering curiosity about its situational playability.

This game does not accomodate small twitches – making it less than ideal for play during commutes.

Although easy to use and well-adapted to its mobile platform, this game requires a great deal of accuracy to play through. Where most popular mobile games give a little leeway for random twitch movements, this game does not accomodate small twitches – making it less than ideal for play during commutes on pretty much any form of public or private transportation ever. 

Of course, this isn’t a huge concern (unless you’re prone to yelling and throwing things in rage), and will hardly apply to everyone. If you’re just looking for something to settle in with while you’re munching a sandwich during your break, this will probably do you just fine.

For those of you interested in checking out Satellina‘s background tracks, you can stream them for free or download them with “pay what you want” pricing here on Bandcamp.

Satellina is out for worldwide release today on iOS for $1.99 USD and will be released on Android on January 29 in the Google Play Store.