Space Bandit has a fairly simple approach to gunfights. Get in, kill everyone before they kill you, and don’t be afraid to use the spaceship itself to help with the job.
Developed by Sam Murray, Space Bandit is a fast-paced twin-stick roguelite that originally launched in 2022. You play as one of the solar system’s most wanted gun smugglers, who has been ripped off by a client and decides the most reasonable response is to go on a rampage for revenge and profit.
There are procedurally generated zones, mutations, plenty of weapons, and some surprisingly smart enemies standing in your way. It currently holds a Very Positive rating on Steam too, with 94% of its user reviews giving it a thumbs up.
These Enemies Aren’t Going to Run Straight at You
One of the things Space Bandit puts a lot of emphasis on is its enemy AI. Rather than filling each room with targets that simply charge toward you, enemies can work together and make use of their surroundings. That means running into the middle of a room and hoping your trigger finger can deal with everything isn’t necessarily going to end well.
Gunfights are deliberately fast and brutal as a result. Sometimes carefully getting behind a group and taking them down before they know what’s happening will be the better option. Other times, things fall apart and spraying bullets at anything that moves becomes Plan B.
Considering permadeath is part of the deal, getting that decision wrong can bring a run to a fairly abrupt end.
The Spaceship Is One Very Large Weapon
Your guns aren’t the only things capable of killing someone. Windows can be destroyed during fights, causing anyone unfortunate enough to be standing nearby to get sucked out into space. Grenades can blow groups apart and create clouds of smoke that you can use for cover, while certain weapons open up even more options.
The Rail Gun, for example, can fire straight through walls. There’s a sword too, which lets you slice enemies up and reflect incoming bullets back toward whoever made the mistake of firing them at you.
Mutations Can Completely Change a Run
This is still a roguelite, so you’re not going to be working with exactly the same setup every time.
Space Bandit has four procedurally generated zones to fight through, with mutations providing different abilities and effects that can change how you approach each attempt. Weapons give you another reason to adapt. Finding something capable of firing through walls creates very different opportunities from heading into a fight with a more conventional gun, particularly when the environment can be used against the enemies standing on the other side.
There are four bosses waiting across the game too, and the developer specifically describes them as having no bullet-sponge design.
In other words, the challenge is supposed to come from surviving the fight rather than spending five minutes gradually emptying an enormous health bar.
Even Dead Enemies Aren’t Safe
Your professional business partner spends his time chain-smoking and talking about conspiracy theories, while enemies can still be kicked around after you’ve killed them because, according to the Steam page, they could always be deader. It’s a pretty good indication of what you’re getting into.
The pixel-art presentation may look simple, but underneath it is a shooter built around quick decisions, aggressive enemies, environmental kills, procedural runs, and combat where making one mistake can be enough to send you back to the beginning.
Space Bandit isn’t a huge game, and with only 75 Steam reviews, it’s easy to see how it could have slipped past a lot of roguelite players since its 2022 release. However, if throwing someone through a spaceship window before reflecting their friend’s bullets back at them sounds like your idea of a good run, this particular bandit might be worth discovering.