Justice Bundle Reviews #6: 10S

Itch has a reputation for hosting weird games. Half-finished prototypes, entries for high-concept game jams, pornographic visual novels, whatever! I find it delightful, a hotbed of creativity unrestrained by the expectations of popular genres or the strictures of curatorial Puritanism.

10S by Owch is one of those peculiar animals that gives Itch its rep. You can try to summarize it in the idiom of the mashup: "it's a tennis bullet hell with the randomized power-ups of a run-based Roguelike and a splash of Arkanoid's ludic feel" perhaps? But in the time you spend squinting and trying to picture what that shakes out to, you might as well watch a trailer or go play the thing yourself. "Defies description" has a new challenger.

When my wife saw this over my shoulder, she asked, "Why are you on a road?" Why indeed. This whole game is a koan.

 
10S is baffling, difficult even on its "Easy" setting, and sometimes frustrating, but by the end I came to appreciate that it is really well put together. For instance, I vented to my main gaming Discord that I thought its "skip to the level of your choice" feature was a chump option, given you receive no handicap to balance out all the powerups you've leapt over. But its existence helped me accomplish my win! Beating my head against the battle in World 3-2 for an hour or two with no stat boosts meant that when I doubled back to make a run all the way from 1-1 to the end, I had all the practice necessary to take my more juiced-up avatar through to victory.

And none of this even touches on the "Part 2" included in your purchase: a world titled "Out" that almost entirely jettisons the tennis theme, instead letting you wander a surreal landscape smacking monsters, complete with RPG-style damage number flyouts. Was this a second, separate game that the author decided to tack on to her battle-tennis invention for the hell of it? Or is there some throughline between the two hinting at a well of deep lore?

You'll have to play it and decide what you think! 10S is a fascinating, challenging artifact that can be yours for $5 on Itch.