When I saw that THOTH was a twin-stick shooter, I was immediately intrigued. I’ve always been fond of games that utilize twin-stick movement. Nano Assault Neo on the Wii U, and Animal Crossing: Sweet Day, part of Nintendo Land, also on Wii U, were highly enjoyable experiences for me. Does THOTH earn itself a rank with my other twins-stickers?

THOTH differentiates itself well from other shooters. Simplicity is key here, with very simple, yet clean graphics and simple, yet enjoyable gameplay. Evading enemies is really fun thanks to great controls, and just barely scooting past death feels really satisfying. Your ship (circle?) has only one hit, so you have to be careful, though when you get hit all is not lost. You get one more try to beat the level, but with this last chance, all the walls in the stage are instant death which as you’d imagine steeply increases the difficulty; especially if you’re a sissy like me who usually hugs the walls for dear life. If you fail that second time you get sent back to your last checkpoint which is spaced one every fourth level. You can also play co-op with a friend, which is a lot of fun.

Don’t expect to be playing for too long though, as you can beat the game within an hour of starting it. This isn’t completely unacceptable or anything due to THOTH’s low price ($4.99) however given how fun it is I yearned for more content. There are some extra challenges where you have to beat a certain amount of levels without checkpoints, and while I am glad they at least put this in I would have more appreciated a hard mode unlocked for the main levels. The no checkpoint challenges just weren’t as fun as the main game to me and got kinda frustrating due to their length. 

I also didn’t really enjoy the music. It’s just kinda ‘spacey’, and lacks any kind of melody. Atmospheric music has it’s place in certain games, but here it just felt to me like the developer just cheaped out. This is subject to opinion, of course. A more universal complaint though is that there is no pause menu; if you hit ‘start’ you’re back to the main menu losing all progress you had. Please put a pause menu in! 

There are a few other things that I think could have been better, with presentation being one of them, but most of the negatives get drowned out by the fact that I really enjoyed playing THOTH. I had a lot of fun with it, and will certainly see myself coming back to it in the future when I need a quick twin-sticks fix. For $4.99, I’d say definitely pick it up if you’re a fan of the genre.