As a kid in the 2000s, I was neck-deep in own little Beyblade-mania. I always caught the show when I could, had a beystadium, and had a handful of beyblades to call my own. With the game advertising itself to be a top-battling physics action game with a Y2K edge, I felt as if I was the exact target audience for it and I was very excited to play the game. Unfortunately, whether you’re a Beyblade fan or not, the game leaves a lot to be desired.
Let it R.I.P.
Slayblade takes a quantity over quality approach. There’s over sixty customizable parts, twenty-eight modifiers for your run, and seventeen “episodes” which are pre-customized runs. This no doubt took some time to implement during development, but it’s time that should have been spent improving the core gameplay loop. If you’ve played one run, you’ve played them all. Each run can be completed in about fifteen to twenty minutes. No matter what parts you have, the weight of your top, what opponent you’re facing, or even what modifiers you have, the gameplay will always feel the same and you’ll mostly rely on being the first to touch the power-up cube to win. The repetitive nature and short playtime leaves the game feeling more appropriate as a game on your phone you play to waste time at the doctor’s office or the DMV.
The name Slayblade begs the question, what does the game have to say about Beyblade? Well, nothing actually. Outside of the name and the fact that you control battling tops, the game named Slayblade has nothing to say about Beyblade. However, it does have a lot to say about Elon Musk and his takeover of Twitter for some reason. The final boss is a parody of Musk named X who you face off against in the slayblade league finals in a big “X” building, there’s a slayblade tip that is a dead Twitter bird, and one of the selling points on the game’s Steam page is “[saving] the city from a rich loser.”
The emphasis on Musk seems very out of place for a game that touts a Y2K aesthetic and 2000s vibes given that he didn’t really reach global recognition until the mid 2010s. The game is full of things like this. The game labels it’s CRT filter as “90s mode”, it boasts a “miniature PS1 city” while taking on a more 2DHD style a la 2018’s Octopath Traveler, and the logo of the game resembles the skate apparel brand, Supreme, which was established in 1994 and, like Musk, achieved the bulk of its popularity in the 2010s. I’m not asking for a full commitment to the styles of the 2000s but the game just does not resemble the era at all and the Y2K angle feels very much like a marketing gimmick.
Despite my gripes with the game, the foundation for something good is present. The controls in-battle are novel and the physics feel good to weaponize against your opponent. While I do take issue with the heavy nostalgia baiting, outside of this context there are some nice visuals: the city is very vibrant, all slayblade parts are unique, and the protagonist looks cool.
Conclusion
Slayblade is a competent game from a technical standpoint. It doesn’t have any major glitches and the gameplay is interesting conceptually, but it doesn’t develop the core gameplay loop enough to be engaging. The shallow gameplay is accompanied by a shallow attempt at 2000s nostalgia. The Beyblade inspiration especially feels like it comes from a mindset of lumping Beyblade in with a general Y2K aesthetic rather than the developers actually having a passion for it. Unfortunately, Slayblade goes all-in on this sort of nostalgia pandering while not doing anything to be memorable on its own.
