Project X: Light Years Is The Ultimate Old-School Space Shooter Shamelessly Disguised As Modern

Hello everyone. Let’s dive into Project X: Light Years, a so-called “modern reimagining” of a thirty-year-old Amiga side-scroller. Nostalgia’s a powerful drug, isn’t it? And like most powerful drugs, it comes with some rather hilarious side effects. This is gaming’s equivalent of finding an old VHS tape in your attic, dusting it off, and then selling it back to you as a 4K Blu-ray “Ultimate Remaster Collector’s Director’s Definitive Edition.” Because clearly what the world needed right now was another side-scrolling shooter brought back from the crypt of gaming history, polished up with high-definition gloss, and shoved in front of a generation that never asked for it.

The Premise – Old Aliens, New Excuses

So, aliens are back. Again. Because in gaming, aliens are like a bad rash: they flare up every decade, demand your attention, and need immediate laser-based treatment. We’re thirty years post-“original battle,” and surprise – they’ve returned stronger, nastier, and conveniently timed just so this game can exist. You’re cast in the role of humanity’s only hope, flying through space, facing waves of enemies that all seem to have an entire union dedicated to kamikaze attacks. Classic, predictable, and as subtle as a frat party during exam week.

Now, don’t get me wrong – nostalgia bait is the oldest and most effective trick in the book. But the way Project X: Light Years tries to balance “modern graphics” with “classic gameplay” ends up reminding me of a Frankenstein’s monster stitched together from two completely different corpses. It’s alive, sure, but don’t ask it to go on Dancing With The Stars.

Gameplay – Bullet Hell Masquerading as Nostalgia

• Classic Side-Scrolling Action: Translation: This game plays like it’s still 1992, but we slapped an HD filter on it. You shoot, things explode, you collect glowing doodads. Rinse and repeat until either the boss dies or you rage quit because you blinked for half a second and your ship evaporated.
• Dynamic Environments: Fancy talk for “asteroids, planets, and space stations.” You’ve seen these backgrounds hundreds of times, from R-Type to Ikaruga. Don’t expect level design that revolutionizes anything. It’s the equivalent of rearranging furniture in your living room and calling it a remodel.
• Challenging Enemies: Or let’s be blunt: cannon fodder with different paint jobs. Half of them look like they escaped from a rejected Galaga sequel. And those “unique attack patterns?” It’s dodge spam with a side of “hope your reflexes are on steroids.”
• 35 Random Power-Ups: The game hands you so many toys, you’d think it was compensating for something. Half of them are either overpowered nukes or utterly useless gimmicks designed to make you look like you’re piloting a clown car in space.
• Epic Boss Battles: Ah yes, the bread and butter – massive bullet-sponging beasts that take up half the screen, all while vomiting particle effects like an EDM festival gone wrong. Challenging? Maybe. Fun? That depends on how allergic you are to cheap deaths.
• Multiplayer Mode: Because misery loves company. Why die alone when you can bring a friend along to watch you both get obliterated?

Gameplay-wise, this is bullet hell with a fresh coat of paint and the same old infuriations. Which, for die-hard fans, is exactly the point. For everyone else? It’s a masochistic ride sprinkled with a nostalgia filter that desperately screams: “Remember when games were hard?” Yeah, and remember when hospitals didn’t have anesthesia? Not everything about the past needs to make a comeback.

Graphics and Sound – Better, but Still a Retro Costume Party

The visuals are undeniably sharp. High-definition sprites, flashy particle effects, and enough neon to make Cyberpunk’s Night City jealous. But they’re still retro-styled environments trying to pretend they’re modern. It’s like giving a decades-old MRI machine a new touchscreen interface – still clunky underneath, just shinier on the outside.

The soundtrack, meanwhile, is a “remastered” nostalgia trip designed to remind old fans why they lost their hearing playing this game in the 90s. It’s loud, it’s beat-heavy, and it’s actually one of the few redeeming features because at least it leans into the absurdity without apology. Bravo there.

System Requirements – Amusingly Optimistic

Minimum PC requirements include a GTX 1060. For a side-scrolling pixel parade. A game so small it fits on 1 GB of space – that’s about half the size of a single Call of Duty weapon skin. So either this thing is secretly mining cryptocurrency while you play, or the developers spun the tech wheel of fortune and said: “Eh, let’s overshoot, scare the potatoes out of grandma’s old laptop.”

On Steam Deck, apparently you can get away with much weaker specs, which makes me wonder why desktop suddenly needs to pretend it’s rendering Crysis-in-space. Trust me, this is not the second coming of Unreal Engine 5. It’s lasers, explosions, and sprites. Let’s not be dramatic.

Closing Diagnosis – Fun Nostalgia or Unnecessary Resuscitation?

Here’s the blunt diagnosis: Project X: Light Years is a reasonably solid side-scroller with beautiful polish, a nostalgic soundtrack, and masochistic difficulty spikes that will appeal primarily to hardcore veterans of the genre. But underlying all that sheen, it’s still just the same formula you’ve played to death, updated with DLC-generation flash. For old-school fans, it’s worth a go. For newcomers, it’s like being thrown at Dark Souls with a blindfold – rage, repeat, regret.

Verdict? It’s decent but hardly groundbreaking. Good enough for nostalgia junkies, frustrating enough for casual gamers, and laughable in its “modern requirements.” The galaxy will survive without this, but if you’re into punishing shooters with a retro twist, this might just scratch that itch.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is entirely my opinion.

Project X: Light Years, https://store.steampowered.com/app/3080530/Project_X_Light_Years/