Deep Space Dapper Squad
Deep Space Dapper Squad is… kind of like if Voidblazers was an endless roguelite. You fly around in a little ship from a top-down perspective, dodging and shooting rocks and aliens. You have a special ability that’s unique to each ship. You earn space money to spend on ship upgrades (short term) or new ships (permanent). There’s a daily run that’s the same for everyone across the globe, which is a great place to try a new ship you can’t afford yet, and each new run starts at the beginning.
One thing that sets this game apart from others like it is the energy system. You use energy to fire your lasers, but it depletes. To recharge, you have to crank the crank (oh, so the crank DOES charge it). Your left thumb can come over to keep you shooting (with the A button), or it can make sure you keep dodging space debris with the d-pad while you’re cranking your weapon systems back to life. I recommend the dodging.
There are a variety of level types, from ones where you just have to survive for a set amount of time, to levels where you have to defeat a certain number of enemies. Each level completed will bring you further along the Super Mario World-esque overworld galaxy map, and at the end of each you’ll have a boss battle with a big-eyed space monster. Defeat it and get a new batch of planets to explore, as well as a collectible treasure or ship upgrade. The ship upgrades range from faster shooting to quicker movement to extra projectiles, and some are huge upgrades while others you’ll barely notice. Some even have negative impacts as well to offset the positives, so it’s up to you how you want to play that run.
There’s a good amount of personality to it, too. Some planets are wearing a top hat and a mustache so you know you can buy upgrades there, or some planets just give you a little prize. Some of the aliens felt a little Mars After Midnight-y to me, which I appreciate. You get to decide if you want to explore every world before advancing to the next set or just make a straight shot for the boss. Your energy and shields carry over from one level to the next, but beating more levels is also the only way to earn space bucks for upgrades. Each planet has a difficulty level that says how hard it is before you visit, so you can decide the best course of action.
The online leaderboards (on the Catalog version) let you compete with other dapper folks around the world, and there are some impressive scores up there. Sadly for me, a Playdate system update cleared my collection and savings so I got to start over. I didn’t have a TON, but it’s always sad to lose progress, especially when I had a pretty solid $10,000 run yesterday and could’ve gotten a cooler ship today. The initial ship, after trying a better one as part of a daily run, is slow! It’s nice to actually feel like your new ship you just purchased is a marked improvement, though, and you don’t start playing Burnout Paradise with the supercars right off the bat. You have to earn them!
Deep Space Dapper Squad is a great game to play for 10 minutes a day instead of looking at the horrors of the world on your phone, and a long-term reward system means that there’s a little more permanence than many standard “always start from square one” roguelikes. Space! Fun! Top hats! It’s got it all, and you can really feel yourself getting better at the game as you return again and again for just one more run.