Akka Arrh Review – Colorful, But Cluttered

Akka Arrh is a reimagined version of a prototype Atari arcade machine from the ‘80s. Originaly scrapped because of lack of interest, the trailer for its re-release states that three cabinets had been ever seen. Atari called veteran designer Jeff Minter, Polybius, Tempoest 2000 to help them remake one of their games. He chose Akka Arrh 40 years later. The result is a reimagining of the original concept, fused with Minter’s signature psychedelic visuals and some modern-day improvements. The game’s visual clutter is a major drawback.

Akka Arrh is a top-down shooter where you’re tasked with defending yourself from colorful, abstract enemies using bullets and bombs. You gain most points by bombing basic enemies. They also create chain explosions that can be used to destroy them. You get one bullet for every bomb-bombing enemy. This can be used to take out larger enemies who are not immune. You want to get as many points as you can, so drop only one bomb. Then keep it going for as long as possible. Akka Arrh can feel amazing when you have a solid chain. Waves of geometric shapes eliminate enemies before they reach the ground and the name at the top of screen becomes increasingly silly.

The game can be very difficult even when playing on the normal mode. This is not unusual for an arcade game in its time. To keep arcade players returning for more, you should have arcade games with high skill ceilings. Modern audiences will appreciate the fact that the game can save you your top-scoring levels from each level. This allows you to return whenever you like, rather than having you go through every level. However, the levels that stumped me were still difficult, even though I was healthy and had a high bullet count. It’s less of a matter of decreasing the difficulty and more of a matter of convenience.

While I generally respected Akka Arrh’s challenging gameplay, one element consistently annoyed me. The game’s camera follows your cursor, which gives you free rein to fly around the level. It doesn’t seem like that would be a bad thing until you realize how frequently bullets and enemies spawn off-screen when you’re aiming too far in the opposite direction. It’s even worse when you have a power-up that kills enemies from far away, and you kill one that launches bullets on death without even realizing it. One hit ends your whole chain, and in a game as intense as this, it’s frustrating to have your score messed up by a factor that feels out of your control. 

This is my biggest complaint about this game, the chaotic art direction. Although they were distracting in a sense, I found it tolerable that the flashing and psychedelic visuals could be disorienting. For anyone with sensitive eyes, there’s an option to disable them in the settings, which is a nice touch. The screen’s simultaneous insufficient and excessive amount of information is what really bugs me. The game will congratulate you as your chain grows. However, it requires so much focus that the noise often becomes one layer. It’s especially frustrating when there’s information I wish the game was more upfront about, like how much health I have left or which power-ups I have active.

It’s clear a lot of care was put into the enemy design, the silly text, and the audio cues, but a lot of the game is so abstract that it’s hard to parse what’s going on. Sometimes the screen flashes red, but I couldn’t tell if it was good or bad. A pulsing sinewave was sometimes what I could hear, though I wasn’t sure why. The text I read was often funny, but when it’s arranged in a spinning circle and I’m frantically trying to blast killer polygons, I just don’t have time to read it. 

I finally put the pieces together. For example, the red flashing screen happens when you kill a specific enemy, the pulsing sine wave usually means an enemy is invading, and if the center of the screen isn’t too busy, you can see how much health you have in the distance below your ship. Akka Arrh doesn’t have a difficult gameplay or any unsolvable mysteries. But the steep adjustment curve for understanding it can be confusing, especially considering that it was designed with modern game mechanics in mind. 

Akka Arrh can be a fascinating experiment. Despite its shortcomings, Atari fans can still find some fun in this blaster from the past – the game just comes with a big asterisk. As much as I’m excited to see a lost piece of gaming history revitalized and brought to modern consoles, overwhelming visuals and confusing, abstract game mechanics bring the experience down.