Subdivision Infinity DX emphasizes on its short bursts of gameplay, and that’s due to the length of its stages. Each one is quick and snappy with two phases most of the time. This lends a pick-up-and-play nature for those looking for a quick fix which can be the game’s best quality. The adventure doesn’t overstay its welcome; bear in mind the simple story is told entirely through floating dialogue icons and static portraits. The setup is something you’ve seen many times before and is not unique in the least. You play a generic man who answers a distress signal which eventually leads to a surface level adventure with a robot companion to liberate five zones.

"Subdivision Infinity DX emphasizes on its short bursts of gameplay, and that’s due to the length of its stages. Each one is quick and snappy with two phases most of the time. This lends a pick-up-and-play nature for those looking for a quick fix, which can be the game’s best quality."

Each ship has enough that is relatively unique to them to set them apart from one another but it is nothing too drastic. Differentiating factors are the typical health and shield along with shield recharge time, speed and other metrics. The variety of weapons is modest. Thankfully, getting them isn’t nearly as much of a hassle as the spacecraft, only costing coins to unlock and some semi-common materials to upgrade. While ship and weapon customization are fine, the process of getting materials leans very heavily on randomness which results in a lot of grinding. Mission rewards are randomized with each stage being relatively short and repeatable. There are no checkpoints to speak of, but this is somewhat alleviated by the time it takes to clear a stage. Another problem is, if you have trouble getting past certain levels and think that you need a better ship, you’re out of luck as material grinding rears its ugly head.

Talking about progression, there are ore deposits that have a couple restrictions surrounding them. For one, you can only mine these in exploration missions or free play so-to-speak. To their credit, this is some of the best parts of the gameplay, allowing for some chill exploration without the urgency of completing objective in stages. However, this means that to get the necessary minerals, you need to halt your mission progress. Secondly, mining equipment is required and takes up a slot in a ship’s customization. It’s frustrating then that the starter ship can’t equip these tools, and in a balanced playthrough, you cannot even get a ship that can equip them until the middle of the second area. This is primarily a hurdle in the opening portion but the choice to have a ships’ availability unlock early and not being to craft it is a classic case of unbalanced progression out the gate.

The controls are very mixed and easily the weakest aspect of the title, since it impacts every part of combat and exploration. To start, Subdivision Infinity DX does not use an analog stick for thrusting, instead opting to have thrust and reverse thrust mapped to L2 and L1 inputs respectively. In addition, there is no dodge maneuver and the face buttons do nothing. Tilting the left stick allows for strafing and the right stick handles pitching up and down. In fact, there is no control customizability whatsoever. Granted, full button remapping might be too much of an ask, but only having one control scheme is very inconsiderate for accessibility. Simple things like swapping the sticks and the triggers aren’t available, so what you see is what you get. Fans of space flight sims each play the games differently, so a bit of customizability would have been a nice addition. Even if this scheme can be committed to muscle memory, it still felt a bit off compared to other titles in the genre.

"The controls are very mixed and easily the weakest aspect of the title, since it impacts every part of combat and exploration."

Something I found very disappointing is that Subdivision Infinity DX has zero DualSense support other than traditional rumble. With all the weapons on offer, tuning the adaptive triggers to their fire rate would have been a really cool addition to say, “this is something that can only be done on PS5, let’s take advantage of this opportunity.” The approach taken is nothing ventured, nothing gained; meaning that this version is a straight port with little to no improvements over previous release. Adding Adaptive Trigger support in this game may not have been easy, but this is still a missed opportunity and could have helped bring a better level of immersion. All told, the control scheme makes navigating each area just okay to handle, but dogfights end up feeling sluggish. The auto aim is very generous but dodging projectiles is difficult since the enemy AI will always lead ahead of where you’re going. Trying to not get blasted can be disorienting. It just feels like enemies circle around you on a constant basis which really isn’t engaging. There is an easy difficulty option which I recommend as it makes fights end quicker, and the damage taken is somewhat reasonable unless you get swarmed too much. However, enemy aggression is unchanged

Aside from fighting smaller ships and destroying bases, there are also boss battles, the first of which is a form of jousting. This boss has one primary goal in mind, and that’s to ram into your ship for an instant kill. The immediate instinct is to get away as fast as possible and turn around, but these ships have so much shield and health to the point where it’s best to rotate to lock onto the boss as much as possible and only move when absolutely necessary. This way, you can do enough consistent damage to remove the shields. Since the strafing is very slow, this boss fight is bound to be frustrating and makes these particular missions a pain to play. I am all for difficult boss fights but an unbalance one is nothing but a deal breaker.

The artwork is pretty standard for the average spaceship simulator. The skyboxes are the standout and are the main visual aspect that sets each of the five areas apart. This combined with the populated space of asteroids and stations are almost wallpaper worthy. When it comes to playing though, the terrain and enemy models are overused to a ludicrous degree which takes away from what little variety there could have been. The same can be said about the sound design and music which can get very repetitive. They are very inconsistent and the music will often drown them out. Camera motion blur is in full swing in addition to object motion blur, causing some pretty intense disorientation. In addition, explosions not only drop the framerate but also cause the screen to shake, rendering the camera shake toggle in the options menu useless.

"Subdivision Infinity DX on PS5 is a straight up port of a spaceship simulator that could have used some major adjustments and additions."

Subdivision Infinity DX on PS5 is a straight up port of a spaceship simulator that could have used some major adjustments and additions. Not having DualSense features on a dedicated PlayStation 5 version seems like a missed opportunity and could have gone a long way to make this version of the game unique. Instead, this spaceship affair has only a couple noteworthy qualities. Even though the ship customization gets the job done and the skyboxes are nice to look at, there are a host of issues with accessibility and difficulty that could make this dogfighting experience unwelcoming for newcomers to the genre.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.

"We tried to make each of these locations to be distinctive and atmospheric perfectly mixing visual, narrative and gameplay."

Subdivision Infinity draws inspiration from several classic NES space combat games- can you talk to us a bit about what parts of the game were most developed with such influences in mind? Were there any other games or any other media that may have inspired other aspects of the game?

Mistfly Games: It’s hard to pick one, it’s an overall experience we got from these games we used to play. In Mass Effect you have unforgettable spirit of deep space and mysteries. In Independence War 2 it’s pirates, outlaws and corporations. Freelancer’s exploration and traveling through the space, Galaxy on Fire’s mining operations. And of course bosses at the end of the level – that’s merit of good old NES games.

What sort of customization options can players expect to see in the game? 

Mistfly Games: There will be special pirate outfit for each player ship. Player can find and collect pieces of these outfits through exploration missions. And there is also special skins for the first player ship featuring a target platform. 

Can players expect to see online multiplayer or co-op features in the game?

Mistfly Games: There is no multiplayer in this game.

Can you talk to us a bit about the locations players will be visiting in the game? How much variation can we expect from these?

Mistfly Games: There will be 5 distinct locations player can travel while completing story missions.

Here is a brief description of each

• Alpha Tyche – a star system where player begins the journey. We call it “flamy” because it looks very red and hot. This system is like a big mining facility and its owned by the “LightWave Tech” corporation. Player will see lots of igneous asteroids with lava and mining stations.
• Revada IV – an abandoned star system designed to be cold and of dark tones. An exhausted planet and huge pumping stations above it, depleting what’s left.
• Cat’s Eye – here player will face aftermaths of a devastating space battle. Broken ship hulls mixed up with asteroids, lonely space stations and thick fog.
• Kongelar – A very cold system with ice all over the place. Rather no law and order is respected here
• Atria’s Gate – giant production and research complex. A city in clouds over a lifeless planet.

We tried to make each of these locations to be distinctive and atmospheric perfectly mixing visual, narrative and gameplay.

"We definitely got huge visual boost utilizing UE4 technology. We also remastered many art assets and up-res them so they would look good on consoles and PC."

Will there be any addition content in Subdivision Infinity DX that wasn’t included in the original release?

Mistfly Games: We already have content and storyline for an additional location, so it’s possible.

How have you taken the feedback the original release of Subdivision Infinity got into account for the upcoming release, both the good and the bad?

Mistfly Games: Yes, we decided to completely remaster the game so it would conform console quality. We reworked and redesigned all the missions adding much variety to the gameplay. We fully redesigned levels, enemies, weapons, ships and added lots of new content. This is not a port, it’s a complete new game.

As for users feedback, the main concern we got from our players was lack of open world and freedom. That is something we’ll add in exploration missions.

Subdivision Infinity was already a very good looking game, especially when one considers that it was made for mobile devices. Does the game receive any sort of a technical or visual boost on any of the new systems its launching for?

Mistfly Games: Yes, we definitely got huge visual boost utilizing UE4 technology. We also remastered many art assets and up-res them so they would look good on consoles and PC.  

Will there be any microtransactions or loot boxes in Subdivision Infinity DX?

It’s a single player premium game, there will not be!

Do you feel that the expectations from a game being made on dedicated consoles are very different from a game being made for mobile devices, in terms of design philosophies or the kind of experience players expect? Is that something that’s been on your mind while working on Subdivision Infinity DX?

Mistfly Games: Yes, as we mentioned, we fully redesigned the game and added lots of new content. The feel of how you play the game and what you experience is completely different from mobile version. 

After bringing over Subdivision Infinity to consoles and PC, is the console market something you see yourselves being more focused on going forward? 

Mistfly Games: Yes, console and PC development is something we would love to do and we think this will be our main focus. On the other hand we have big experience in mobile development, and we see clear trend of console and hardcore gaming going mobile and this is very good news. Devices are getting faster and now you can play PUBG, Fortnite or ARK on your phone, so we will not be completely dropping mobile development. We want to be as cross platform as possible, but our main focus would be PC and consoles.

"We’ve had more bugs on the PS4 Pro that don’t appear on the PS4 Slim."

Will the game will feature Xbox One X specific enhancements. What can players expect if they are playing the game on Xbox One X? Is 4K/60fps on the cards?

Blowfish Studios: Yes we are expecting 4K @ 60fps.

And how will the PS4 Pro version turn out in terms of resolution and frame rate?

Blowfish Studios: The PS4 Pro might support the dynamic resolution feature and aiming at 60 fps as well

From a development perspective, how do you find the Xbox One X to be and how do you compare it with the PS4 Pro?

Blowfish Studios: The Xbox One X is more powerful, plus we’ve had more bugs on the PS4 Pro that don’t appear on the PS4 Slim.

How is the game running on the original Xbox One and PS4, frame rate and resolution wise?

Blowfish Studios: 1080p no issue, the frame rate we’ll have to run more tests with.

Next gen is coming sooner or later. From a development perspective, what is your biggest expectation from PS5 and Xbox Scarlett?

Blowfish Studios: More pixel power so every game can run at 4K and 60fps. Possibly real-time ray tracing HW acceleration?

Do you think cross platform will be one of the defining features of next-gen consoles?

Blowfish Studios: I’d say yes, considering that Sony is opening up the PS4 right now.

"Microtransactions in free games are okay, if it’s not pay to win."

What is your take on the ongoing drama of loot boxes and microtransactions?

Mistfly Games: Microtransactions in free games are okay, if it’s not pay to win.

If you’re looking for a brand new space combat game set in, well, space, then you’ll be interested to know that publisher Blowfish Studios has just announced a brand new title in that vein called Subdivision Infinity DX, which will release for the PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch at some point early in 2019. An announcement trailer for the game and some screenshots have also been released.

In this game, you will play as Sgt. Jed Riddle, who discovers some strange activity taking place in a mining facility, and it’s up to you to find out what exactly is going on. There will be over 40 story missions and also several side missions for players to tackle, and during this time, there will be many fights and boss battles to engage in. Apart from the missions, the game also brings various side activities to players, such as the ability to take on new bounties, crafting upgrades, unlocking new ships, and more.

You can check out the screenshots and announcement trailer below.