Remember those times when you ran around with a squirt gun yelling, “Pew! Pew! Pew!” with your siblings or friends? Mix in some aliens, spaceships, road rage, advanced weaponry, and bank robberies and you might have experienced State of Anarchy while growing up.

Developer: Lapovich Games

Publisher: Sometimes You

6 Hours Played // Review Copy Provided // $7.99

State of Anarchy was recently ported for the Nintendo Switch after releasing on Steam in April of 2016. State of Anarchy is a top down, bullet-hell shooter, stylized with hand-drawn graphics. In addition to this, it is orchestrated with mouth-made sound effects. Sounds pretty crazy, right?

The premise is simple; mow down as many living creatures as you possibly can. Naturally, this must be done without dying. All the while you must avoid an assortment of bullets and other weapons of death with nothing but two joysticks and a few buttons. I think State of Anarchy succeeds in its mission of going postal – but it’s nothing to phone home about.

Banks were some of my favorite environments

The first thing you’ll notice is that State of Anarchy is stylized in a unique, hand-drawn fashion. At first glance, when looking at graphics alone, players might find State of Anarchy lacking. However, when combined with its unique mouth-made sound effects, and all around mass-mayhem, going postal attitude I find it complements the rest of the game fairly well. The levels I enjoyed the most were the bank interiors and the player-piloted spaceship areas. The little things like desks, chairs, and trashcans add a special something on top of an otherwise bland, pencil-and-crayon level design.

Planets are large

The levels change a little bit as the storyline progresses. The city’s environments get more and more destroyed as you rampage across it completing each portion. In the spaceship levels, the planets start moving; thus, a smidge of uniqueness is added to the environments. Nevertheless, the graphics and level design are often repeated throughout the entirety of the 48 stages. Therefore, once you experience each type of level, what you see is what you get.

Get to the bank. Fight at the bank. Get abducted by aliens. Escape aliens. Battle boss. Rinse and repeat.

There is a noticeable gameplay loop that repeats itself; the game itself even knows this and makes fun of itself in one of the loading screen comments. Thankfully, the enemies and weapons are varied enough to make the same gameplay loop feel a little less painful and more enjoyable as you progress.

Through this progression, the difficulty also increases. Naturally, players will die quite often. That means make yourself at home and get comfortable. This is where you make the loading screen your new “best friend”. But don’t worry, you’ll eventually get through it!

pew pew pew, ow ow ow, pew pew pew

State of Anarchy has five talent upgrades which can be purchased after you reach specific levels. There are also four weapon upgrades that can be purchased with cash. Upon completing each level, you will be rewarded with piles of cash to purchase said upgrades! To top if off, you will also acquire a new weapon to use in the following level. However, not all of the 60+ weapons are unique. Some are similar as those previously found, only modified in small ways. These skills are fun to obtain as is leveling them up.

In this way, the player will have some customization options.The modifications to weapons might include more projectiles per shot or a different type of bullet spread. To be clear, there’s no browsing an armory here. The weapon you obtained from the previous boss fight is the weapon you are saddled with for the entirety of the following level. There is also a restriction of switching of weapons mid-level. Let’s now switch to controls!

Very obviously not firing automatically

The controls for this game are almost not annoying. I’m not sure if this is done by bug or design, but I seem to have had an issue with automatically shooting directly North, South, East, or West. The controls are in such a way that any directional movement with the right stick causes bullets to shoot out in that direction automatically. Anything in between and the projectiles would murder my foes nonstop. Move back to one of the “straight directions” and they would quickly cease. This became rather annoying as I would have to hold down R to maintain my preferred bullet per seconds ratio. This became even more complicated when piloting vehicles requiring ZR to be held down for acceleration. Let’s wrap up with the endgame!

The talent tree, next talent point awarded at level 56

Not knowing a whole lot about this game before playing it, I was pleasantly surprised to find the game has two difficulties. Also, once completed, you will be presented with a “Game Plus” mode! The Game Plus mode allows you to keep all of your hard earned upgrades when you start the campaign over from the beginning. This minor adjustment makes you feel like a certified badass.

The End of The World is Near

I was pleasantly surprised with a few aspects of this game and let down by others. The sound, art style and gameplay elements mix well together for a mildly entertaining going postal experience. In the areas of controls and level design I felt let down and thought the game could’ve used a bit more love. This game certainly can’t hold a candle to other bullet hell shooters like Enter the Gungeon, or Danmaku Unlimited 3, but can offer some entertainment value if you dig the art style or think the idea of mouth-made sound effects is something you would find entertaining.

If you enjoyed this review, consider buying us a coffee or joining our Discord. We’d love to hear your thoughts! You can always reach out to me on my Twitter. Maybe you’re in the mood for something different and magical? If you haven’t read our Hand of Fate 2 review, you should probably do that right now.