Drifting Lands is a meaty shooter with a meaningful progression system, but repetitive and unsatisfying level designs keep it from soaring above mediocrity.
Drifting Lands is an hybrid of classical horizontal shoot’em’up with a lot of strong gameplay elements coming straight from the action-RPG genre.
Citizens of the Ark live together or die together. They are the few survivors of worldwide devastation that wiped out billions of humans and robots. Together they piece together ships and try to make a living in space, but now they are under attack and must continue to fight for their survival.
Languard at Fextralife writes, "Alkemi’s Drifting Lands is a 2D shoot-em-up (or shmup, if you’ve not encountered that term before) that takes place in a post-apocalypse Earth. Make no mistake, despite what the developers say about this game, it is 100% a shmup. Now this is not a bad thing, as it is a very good shmup, but the marketing focus on avoiding that label is a bit puzzling; despite the customization the gameplay does boil down to improve your ability to shoot the hell out of things. Semantics aside, this is a very fun game with a few minor flaws and one really annoying element. Is it worth your time overall? Let’s answer that question."
Shame it lacks personality.