While I don’t often play retro games myself, I can appreciate why others do. There’s always something alluring about nostalgia, putting yourself back to a simpler, less money-centric era of gaming when people made games because they wanted people to play them, not just pay for them, and devs were still able to be experimental. It’s how games like the original Metal Gear came about, and I can fully understand why gamers hanker after that experience and why modern devs want to recapture it. Trouble is, as in the case of Spy Drops, it can be difficult to emulate that magic.
Game design used to be a form of alchemy. It still is, to an extent, but there are established formulas that just work now, which devs will gravitate toward. In the early half of the 90s, this was not the case. You had to make it and hope people liked it with no idea what was really going to worm its way into the cultural zeitgeist. When modern studios deliberately attempt the same thing, it often smacks of trying too hard. We already moved on from the things that didn’t work for a reason, so pushing them back into a modern game for the sake of ringing the nostalgia bell feels really odd to me.
Spy Drops does this with almost every element. It’s a top-down stealth adventure that is 100% based on the old school Metal Gear. Instead of Snake, it features a female spy, pop-up portraits for the voices in her ear, and a focus on stealth and forward planning. Only it falls apart almost instantly if you play it on anything but a small screen. On Steam Deck it was clearer, but on my monitor I had to often squint to see what the hell was actually happening. Animations are unclear, and the main character walks as if she’s tipping to one side. It’s immediately off-putting.
Now this is a budget title, and perhaps it’s unfair to tear it down too much for things like appearances, but I’ve seen pixel-based indie games done so much better on small budgets. The colours simply don’t work well together, and it’s exacerbated when you have to change camera angles all the time.
When you want to sidle against a wall in order to fit through gaps or avoid detection, the camera goes third-person, showing your protagonist and altering the movement controls accordingly. For some reason, it’s always jarring, and the camera can be so erratic that it won’t stay where you want it to stay.
There are other small annoyances. Once or twice I grabbed a guard from behind and accidentally let go when I wanted to choke him out and he just shot me. The controls were odd at first too, as I sent myself prone multiple times before I worked out how I’d done it and how to undo it. That may have been on me, but it’s an example of how Spy Drops is just not intuitive. It doesn’t feel like a modern homage to Metal Gear; it feels like a game made later that tried to copy what it had done.
That being said, if you can get to grips with how it moves and plays, Spy Drops has some interesting ideas. For one, the missions are randomly generated, which means you’re always forced to think on your feet. The loop is simple enough, too. You go into a mission, complete the objectives, get paid, and repeat. In between you can alter and upgrade your loadout of weapons and gadgets. Although, I found I often didn’t need them. The enemy AI is clunky at best, and guards will spot you, chase you, and then give up in minutes if you can find a hiding spot, returning to their original position, often with their backs to wherever you are.
Speaking of AI, some may find it a bone of contention that the reams of dialogue in Spy Drops are mostly AI generated. It’s not a secret, and the devs have admitted that it was simply a cheaper option to pay their VAs upfront for the use of their voices and then generate the actual dialogue, but it’s noticeable at times. It’s the most ethical way to use the technology, but there will be some people put off by it.
Despite being a pretty ambitious undertaking and a handful of decent ideas, Spy Drops fails to make the kill. Its story is choppy, the graphics are poor even for an indie of its calibre, and the janky animations and enemy AI just make it feel cheap and laborious to play. It’s slightly better on a smaller screen and can feel good in short doses when all its disparate elements come together, but it’s just not a very fun or enjoyable experience.
