If all you want is the elevator pitch: you take one dollop of Starship Troopers, add a portion of Vampire Survivors, and finish things off with a sprinkle of Jetpack Joyride. Voilà: Hive Jump 2: Survivors.
This new top-down shooter is very much a survivors-like, in the sense that it borrows a lot of the structural norms that we’ve gotten used to from other auto-shooters, with huge waves of enemies attacking while you run, dodge, and upgrade. That said, Graphite Lab and friends have done a good job in adding new ideas and making this feel like more than just another Vampire Survivors clone.
What is Hive Jump 2: Survivors all about?
If you spotted the Starship Troopers reference then you’re already well on your way to understanding what the new Hive Jump is all about. You are a marine, lightly armed and rocking a limited-use jetpack, and you are being attacked by a swarm of giant alien bugs. The aim of the game: clear the hive and wait for evac. Of course, there’s more to it than that, but those are the basics.
You start off with the standard loadout, which gives you a lower powered grenade and ammo combo. The aliens that are attacking you drop the goo you need to upgrade your gear, so once you’ve dispatched your foes you need to pick up what they drop until you reach the threshold for your next level-up. Then there’s a decision or two to be made.
There are passive upgrades that incrementally boost your speed, damage, and whatnot, but there are active upgrades too. You can directly improve your ammo, your grenades, or a utility if you have one. The item system is similar to Brotato in the sense that you need two of the same item at the same rarity, and then you combine them to get the upgraded version. With your limited loadout, you must blast aliens, clear hives, and complete the objectives that pop up now and then in the corner of your screen.
Jump up, jump up, and get down
The key differentiator in Hive Jump 2: Survivors is the jetpack. It works for short bursts and is rather useful for getting out of a sticky situation. The scenery plays a bigger part than it does in most other bullet heavens; there are short sections of wall that you can boost over if you need to get away from a swarm of alien beasties.
The jetpack is limited-use, so you can’t just fly around all the time, raining pain down from above. Instead, it’s your “get out of jail free card” to play when you’re stuck, or when you need to hop over a stream of toxic sludge or a pack of nippy little aliens. Using it effectively feels great, too.
Like all of your gear, you can enhance your jetpack at various points. To that end there are three types of upgrades. The first are the upgrades you can make to your equipped items (see above). Then there are the passive upgrades that improve your speed, damage dealing, and airtime. Finally, there’s the meta-progression that takes place between rounds, which improve your base stats for each run.
Tools of the trade
Another key difference with Hive Jumpers 2: Survivors is inventory management, and in that respect the developer has opted for a “less is more” approach. You start with only three item slots, which you must share between your guns, grenades, and utilities (things like healing towers and electric fences). Finding a good balance here is essential, but because you’ve got relatively limited options, that’s easier said than done.
The three item limit has implications, especially when you’re leveling up your gear. If you’ve got two items equipped, you can use the third slot to hold the parts for future upgrades. For example, you start with pulse ammo and a grenade. After a while you might have upgraded the pulse rifle ammo, but you’ll need another upgraded pulse rifle ammo to improve it again. If you keep it free, using that third spot means that you can speed up the process of levelling your gear in the first two, but it means you’re not using the third very efficiently.
However, if you fill all three then you’ve not got the space in your inventory, and so you’re going to be waiting for the part you need to appear in the upgrade shop at the rarity level you need just so you can combine them. You can lock items down in the shop, but doing this reduces the number of refreshed options offered. You can reroll to get new items, but this uses up your goo. Decisions, decisions.
We’re making progress, people!
Of course, as is the way in this genre, there is meta-progression that sits outside of the gameplay. In between runs you can head to the main menus and spend any points you have collected in-game. This allows you to increase your base health, regen, damage, and much more. These upgrades also work across all different characters, and you unlock them by completing a variety of different objectives.
There are loads of different options, and there are more unlocks to be earned simply by reaching a certain number of upgrades. Some of these are different character types, but the first big one is an upgrade that turns your jetpack boost into a damage-dealing weapon. This changes things quite a bit, in my opinion, by opening up new tactical options during combat.
To be clear, I really like Hive Jumper 2: Survivors, but I do have one complaint. I think there are loads of really cool unlocks just waiting to be discovered, but you have to grind quite a bit to get anywhere near the good stuff. I feel like the game has been stretched too thin around the meta-progression and, in my opinion, I think moving through the gears should be a bit quicker.
Another issue is that sometimes I think the game is a little bit vague, and objectives could be made clearer to the player. However, this is a minor problem in the grand scheme of things and overall I think there are many more positives, including the game’s responsive controls, the challenging combat and traversal, the bold colour palette, and the overall feel of the gunplay.
Hive Jump 2: Survivors is a fine game and I’ve happily included it in my new article about bullet heavens and games like Vampire Survivors. If you’re looking for a roguish survivors-like with unique features and a lot of mechanics baked in, then this has that in spades. It’s also competitively priced and considering the low barrier to entry, I think it’s well worth jumping on this one.
Hive Jump 2: Survivors is out now on PC (Lin, Win) and I played the game via access provided by publisher Midwest Games and their friends in PR!
