30XX Update Preview

It’s been almost a year since I played through the stages available in the Early Access of 30XX. I absolutely loved my time playing this spiritual successor to Mega Man X, so I was excited to see that a new boss has been added. The game is still in Early Access and new updates and bug fixes are always being applied, so I was interested to see if the game still felt the same way as I had remembered or if it had been changed.

If you are starting a new file, the game asks you if you want to play Standard or Mega Mode. Standard has permadeath so you have one life and it’s a die-and-retry situation. Once you die you are sent to HQ and any items you collected are gone. If this seems way too brutal for you, there is the Mega Mode option that has no permadeath but any items and power-ups you collect while playing will be there for you to use when you try again. The stage is still randomly generated at the beginning, but you get to keep retrying as long as you would like. This is a great option if you like to memorise and master the level.

The first addition is a new boss named Experiment 9 and the stage is called Watergrav. At first, I was wondering why that name, but I quickly realised why as soon as I started. On some screens of the level, there is water on the top that can be moved with the flick of a switch. If the water is on the bottom it will move to the top and vice-versa; this can be used to trap your enemies in the water so it’s not as easy for them to attack you. If this wasn’t hard enough, throw in platforms that totally change gravity on you. Touch the green areas and gravity is normal, but touch red and you are flipped upside down walking on the roof and jumping on the bottoms of platforms. In some of the areas you get to decide which orientation will work best for you, in others you don’t get to choose so you will have to get through the area upside down. This mechanic is used very well and definitely adds more challenge to the level.

When I first attempted the level, I was playing as Ace — the character who uses blades like Zero does in the Mega Man games — but I found for this level, it was quite difficult to get in close to the enemies without taking a hit, so I ended up changing to Nina instead, who has a blaster. Being able to have a long-range weapon with the blaster definitely helped me. If you ever want to switch who you are playing as just head to the HQ and on the right-hand side you can change.

There are a few mini-bosses in the level that you will encounter. The first is a mechanical dragon in a moving coffin? At least that is what it looks like! When you defeat these dragons, you will receive a blessing that gives you the choice of three power-ups that you can select from for your character. The great thing is, if you are playing on Mega Mode you will get to keep this for your next attempts. I’m betting that you will die more than a few times, so being able to make your character stronger for your next attempt is great.

When you die, you will receive a performance review. These are one of my favourite things in the game and I was so happy to see they are still here! It not only gives you stats on your run such as level reached, enemies killed, run time, and how much damage you received and dealt, but you get a failure note. This is usually from the Bureau of Encouragement and is a smart-ass comment about your performance. Tidbits like “I think we forgot to give this one a brain. Sad!”— Department of Blame, made failing on the stage a bit better. I was also excited to see what kind of comment I would get the next time.

Experiment 9 was an incredibly challenging boss to fight! Especially since the mode I was playing didn’t have all the weapons from the other bosses added to the difficulty, it was just Nina and her blaster. The boss looked really cool and had some really awesome weapons that destroyed me multiple times. I don’t want to spoil it and give way too much information but it’s definitely neat!

30XX is still the game I loved a year ago, with a new challenging stage and boss. Though I have to wonder if another boss will show up in the HQ boss room, there is one more empty space… Maybe it will be a final boss similar to Wily’s Castle or Sigma’s Fortress in Mega Man; I am so excited to see what will all be in the final version of the game when it is released! If you haven’t tried 30XX yet, go try it right now! I promise that if you are a fan of Mega Man X you will enjoy this game!