Xenodrifter tries a lot of different things yet it feels so light on content that it doesn't deliver on any of them. The main thing this game is aiming for is that is is a Metroidvania-lite. It succeeds on the fact that you need to beat bosses to get new abilities in order to explore other areas. Some of the abilities are from this developers previous work Mutant Mudds. For example one power up lets you go into the background to find new areas to explore. Another system in the game is being able to power up the gun in different ways using a different pickup. Unfortunately both of these aspects of this game aren't fully explored and are really straightforward in their approach.
Every map you explore is almost totally linear other than having one point in the map where it splits off in one direction for a few moments. Making the gun fire faster and hit harder is the obvious choice when the rest of the power ups seem useless like having a 3 shot burst that fires 1 shot in each direction instead of firing them all at once. Along with the fact that you will fight the same exact boss in every boss room for the entire game is slightly repetitive. But they do give the boss new moves each time that mix it up a little bit. In the end this game has a lot of good ideas but they aren't interesting enough to make me like this game. Still it is so short that you might want to check it out yourself to see if you like it more than me.