Docking Sequence Review

Docking Sequence is a throwback game in which players must dock a space ship with a space station. It’s brutally difficult, but it’s also quite simple in the sense that its gameplay is very, very straightforward. On its edges it makes an effort to reference sci-fi novels and movies, but its ability to add value is limited to each player’s tolerance for Docking Sequence‘s particularly limited approach.

As mentioned, Docking Sequence is pretty straightforward: players control a spaceship by sliding their finger in the direction they’d like to move and can hold to stop, with the ultimate goal of entering a space station and docking without hitting any obstacles. Along the way they will be given the option to gather floating spacemen to increase their score, but the core of the game is strictly seeing how many times players can successfully dock without dying.

To accompany this sparse gameplay are some stripped-down visuals that could be nostalgic in some way, but are largely not particularly appealing. Backgrounds are rendered in a chunky, pixel art style while items in the foreground are presented in a higher resolution, which makes Docking Sequence feel like a stylistic mishmash. Also, most of the sci-fi references are presented through text written on the side of a particular level’s docking station or in the flavor text between levels.

To its credit, Docking Sequence is mechanically a pretty well-designed game. What I mean is that its level structure and the new elements that are presented are generally novel and enjoyable while also rolling out at a nice pace. That being said, even with these new features Docking Sequence feels a little hollow due to its very sparse design. Players looking for anything more than “dock the ship here” will not find it here.

In the end, Docking Sequence is a pretty good game with some problems that could completely turn off players. Its extremely straightforward nature and visual style could read as throwback to some, or just plain uninteresting to others. There is an odd amount of attention to detail in some areas, but it’s hard to say if this attention was spent in the right place, making the game feel almost as eerie as the cold, empty space it is set in.