The awesome upcoming arcade-style, third-person shooter by Lab Rats Studio is launching on December 22nd. If you haven’t checked out our interview with Lab Rats Studio, be sure to check it out here. Ayopa Games, who will be publishing M.U.S.E., has just released a new trailer. Check it out in full HD.
Our full review of M.U.S.E. will be up within days, so make sure to come back and get all the details about this epic shooter. If you want more info, check out Lab Rats Studios site and Ayopa Games site. Mark December 22nd on your calendars.
Dual-stick space shooters are fairly popular within the AppStore. It seems like every time I turn around, there’s another DSSS available. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, because since Meteor Blitz, one of the very first games I ever bought in the AppStore, I’ve been hooked on them. Lei Cao’s War on Geometry is the most recent title at the moment, but it’s not exactly what you would expect from a game that’s set-up like a dual-stick shooter. There are no joysticks.
The controls are set up so you’ll need to place your finger over your ship, and drag it all around the screen while using another finger to tap and hold where you want to shoot. It plays as frustrating as it sounds, leaving you to try and keep your hands and fingers out of your field of vision as much as possible while moving your ship all around the screen, and firing, usually banging your fingers together and wrapping them around one another quite a bit. That’s not to say that this is a bad game, because it’s not, and I’m sure that the controls are a lot easier to use on an iPad, with the HD build, but on a small screen, the controls do pose a very big issue. Especially once you find out how the game starts.
You’ll find yourself in the middle of the screen, needing to shoot a white orb to start the game. Once you shoot the orb, circles and triangles start coming directly at you from all sides of the screen, making it extremely hard to get out of the way, because you’re always going to be blocking a section of the screen with your fingers. Good luck trying to shoot your way out, because it’ll require you to block even more of the screen with another finger.
But if you can make it out of this first wave of enemies, the game starts to open up, but it’ll take a while to get use to the controls, because each following wave follows the same pattern. Enemies moving to the center of the screen from all sides of your device. But you’ll generally be able to face them with more firepower, as while you’re maneuvering out of the way of the first wave, or usually almost right after that, two optional power-ups appear on the screen, one a laser, and another a slightly powered up version of your original weapon.
There are no GameCenter leaderboards or achievements, but there is an in-game world leaderboard, which you are able to submit your highest score to, which means no hacked scores, but also no competing with GC friends, or replaying for achievements. For $0.99 (also $0.99 for the HD build), it’s not bad by any means, especially if you’re looking for a game with a real challenge, but hopefully in a future update, some joysticks will be added, making the game less frustrating for the majority of players out there. It would also be nice to see some added modes, as there are tons of dual-stick shooters available in the AppStore that almost all have loads of gameplay modes, and provide a more entertaining gaming experience for the same price, or even less (yes, that’s right, free – think PewPew).
Shoot-em-ups have become a fairly popular genre within the iOS gaming crowd. Thankfully, the 3rd person rail-shooter genre hasn’t been left out of this revolution. Games like Dark Break, Denizen, ExZeus, TheMars and the more open ended Battle 3D: Robots Sky have given iOS gamers endless hours of Space Harrier type 3rd person rail-shooting excitement, though sadly, it’s far from the amount of shmups that can be found within the AppStore. Hopefully with the growing hardware, more and more 3rd person rail shooters will be developed. Until then, we can add Wizard Ops to this small list of games, developed by Phyken, you’ll guide a Wizard through 6 levels of hectic action, as well as have an endless survival level to try and play through.
Granted, 6 levels does seem short, but the replay value is fairly high, and there’s apparently more levels coming in the future, and at the current price-point, it’s hard to get upset when the 6 levels can be played over and over again to earn more coins which let you unlock any of the 18 total weapons that you can mix and match, equipping 2 at a time, along with the endless survival level offering up hours upon hours of gameplay.
The controls in Wizard Ops are fairly well implemented, having the player touch on the bottom of the screen in the “touch area” to control aiming and left and right movement. There are some areas where you’ll be able to move up and down as well, which is also controlled by sliding your finger along the bottom of the screen.
Now, I’ve already said that there’s 18 weapons, but getting into them while talking about the controls is probably a good idea, because there’s quite a few of them that auto-target, but in a nice way. You won’t be able to just stand there and let these auto-target weapons go to town on all the enemies, instead, you’ll need to scroll over the enemy with your aim, in order to enable auto-targeting. Other than that, almost all of your weapons will shoot straight in-front of where your character is. There are a couple that toss out bombs, or have a spread shot, but basically, you’ll be shooting right in front of your character, and with the 3D onslaught of bullets coming your way, actually getting enough shots off to kill the enemies can sometimes be a challenge, especially in survival mode, where the difficulty ramps up fairly quickly. There will be some gamers out there who feel that the 6 regular levels are fairly easy, especially those of you who are in to bullet hell gaming, but not to worry, the survival mode has the difficulty to keep you hooked for quite some time.
There are pick-ups in the game, with each enemy dropping a bronze, silver, or gold coin, health drops, and even some guns are dropped in-game. If you already have the gun, however, it will automatically be sold, usually for about 300 coins. A major difference with the survival mode is that there are no health drops. So along with even more hectic bullet play, and an increasing difficulty, you won’t be able to regain health, adding even more of a challenge to the endless play.
For those of you who are worried about IAPs, and are wondering if this game’s shop is pushed towards them, you can take a deep breath, and rest easy. There’s NONE. That’s right, an out-right FULL game for $0.99. Better yet? It’s Universal! And aside from the short regular campaign time, having only 6 levels, it’s hard to even bring that up as an issue since they’re all replayable, there’s an endless survival level, and there’s more levels to come. If you’re a fan of 3rd person rail shooters, or even if you aren’t big on them, but love action filled arcade-based games, Wizard Ops is definitely a title that deserves some attention. I, for one, am really hoping that it sells well so that not only can we get the planned more content, but also see more from developer Phyken. The game looks great, plays great, has tons of action, and essentially endless replayabilty, all without any added IAPs, what’s not to like?
Recently I managed to get in touch with Rion Holland over at Lab Rats Studio, the development team behind upcoming Third-Person Shooter M.U.S.E. This game is shaping up to be a down-right awesome shooter and brings back memories of arcade-style multiplier mayhem. Look for preview screens after the break.
– Can you give us some basic background about Lab Rats Studio? When did you guys form the team and what motivated you to enter the development scene?
Lab Rats Studio was formed a little over a year ago by four Wake Technical Community College students with a passion for game development. We all knew finding jobs at game studios in today’s economy would be very difficult with no experience, so we decided to do it ourselves. Lab Rats Studio was one of the inaugural companies to complete Joystick Labs’ three month game development business accelerator program in Durham, North Carolina. We all had a drive to work on our own game and have creative control over the process, which is what led us to create Lab Rats Studio. We realized that the mobile market was growing and there was not a lot of heavy competition for a game like M.U.S.E. yet.
– How did you come up with the ideas behind M.U.S.E.? Have you drawn inspiration from any other games?
As a lot of other games do, we of course drew inspiration from other games that we enjoy. We knew we wanted to create a third person shooter that was visually impressive and consisted of “console-like” shooter gameplay. We sometimes describe M.U.S.E. as a sort of Sci-Fi Max Payne set in a dark alternate present day. Others have noted inspirations from games like Duke Nukem and Gears of War. We then added on top of the shooting a layer of arcade scoring and combo systems that gives the game a competitive aspect to compete with friends to get high scores where players can post high scores to leaderboards via GameCenter or OpenFeint. We, of course, feel like M.U.S.E. is totally different than any other game out there, especially on the mobile market.
– What sort of struggles have you guys faced during the development of M.U.S.E. so far? How have you managed to overcome them?
Our biggest struggle has been that this is our first marketable game as a new game studio, so it has been a learning experience for all of us. We didn’t have a lot of time to spend in pre-production, which is a crucial stage of the game development process, that made us come up with concepts and designs within the production cycle. We also had a pretty large vision for what we wanted M.U.S.E. to be which had to be managed to make it work for mobile devices. As an independent game development studio, we struggled a lot with money and keeping a staff of up to nearly 10 people. All of the people on our development team are extremely talented and dedicated individuals that have continued to work their butts off for the past year to make this game happen. We have managed to create this game on a shoestring budget and are very proud of what we have accomplished.
– What do you guys hope to bring to the App Store with M.U.S.E.? How will this push the iOS gaming platform further into the future?
We are bringing fun and immersive gameplay to the shooter genre on mobile devices. We took a play style that is popular on consoles and made it work for mobile devices so that people looking for a slightly more traditional “shooter” gameplay experience will feel at home in M.U.S.E. The controls have been through much testing and iteration to bring an intuitive and comfortable feeling as similar to a controller layout as possible. As briefly mentioned before, we added an arcade style scoring system and RPG inspired upgrade system to give the game some competition and replayability. Players will also be able to purchase currency via IAP for faster upgrades, or can play through the game and gain currency upon beating levels based off their scores. We are also very happy with the level of detail and quality of artwork we were able to accomplish on mobile devices that will only continue to get better as both we and the hardware continue to develop in the future.
– M.U.S.E. is looking really awesome. Can you tell us about some of the key features that we will see in the game?
M.U.S.E. will feature:
– Gorgeous visuals that showcase the full power of the iPhone4S and iPad 2 and rival console games for graphical richness and detail.
– Arcade-style scoring system that awards players points for combo kills and massive destruction.
– Compete against and challenge friends for the highest scores in Game Center (iOS) and Open Feint (Android) leaderboards.
-“Adrenaline Mode” that is both a beginner’s lifeline and an elite player’s high scoring tool.
– Equip a variety of high-tech weapons as you fight against an army of cybernetic enemies.
– Upgrade your character as you play with over 80 individual upgrades for Sid and his weapons.
– Destructible environments rigged for maximum destruction and pyrotechnic mayhem.
– Immersive single-player campaign with a storyline told through comic book-style cutscenes.
– Full support for iOS 5’s AirPlay mirroring so you can watch your explosive firefights on your big-screen HDTV.
– iCloud saving so you can play on one device and pick up where you left off on another.
– You’ve mentioned an “Adrenaline” Mode. Can you expand on that feature?
“Adrenaline Mode” is a feature we have added to M.U.S.E. that is similar to a “rage” mode in other games where Sid literally shoots himself in the leg with a shot of adrenaline and goes into a state of heightened awareness and power. First off, adrenaline is gained by dispatching enemies or destroying environment objects in game. When your adrenaline meter is full and begins to flash, you can enter adrenaline mode which will slowly regenerate the player’s health, puts an outline on enemies and destructible objects to make them easier to see, bursts the player into slow motion after kills and destruction so they can plan their next move, and puts a bloom effect on screen. While in adrenaline mode, you can extend the timer by continuing to kill enemies and destroy objects, and the longer you do so, the more your adrenaline multiplier increases (the 0.0x in the top right). Every kill in adrenaline mode is multiplied by this value, so kills 60 seconds into adrenaline mode will yield 6x the normal score value, and then multiplied again by whatever your current chain value is. To put it simply, each enemy and destructible has a base score value that is multiplied by the value of the combo chain, and then again by the adrenaline multiplier if you’re in it. So if you kill a Vorg Zed Ultra (base score 700) with a 3x combo chain when the adrenaline multiplier is at 2.5x, you’ll net 5250 points. Adrenaline mode is both an emergency lifeline for those that are about to die and need that extra boost, and a high-scoring method for the elite player that is trying to top their friends’ high scores.
– When do you hope to release M.U.S.E.? Have you discussed a price point?
M.U.S.E. is planned for release in December 2011 just in time for the Holidays. We plan to price the game within the same realm of our competition.
– What does Lab Rats Studio have planned for the future?
We plan to put out a content update for M.U.S.E.: Episode 1 about a month after launch that will include two more levels and a final boss fight level to complete the episode. There will be some added enemy variations and possible new upgrades and weapons to use. After that, we plan to continue the game through three episodic installments to complete the franchise. We are striving to be a premiere cutting edge game development studio on the mobile market.
We really appreciate Rion and Lab Rats Studio taking the time to chat with us about M.U.S.E. To learn more about M.U.S.E. and the studio, check www.labratsstudio.com and follow them on Facebook and Twitter!
Shoot-em-ups have expanded quite a bit since Cave hit the iOS scene in April of 2010. However, very few games have done what Cave’s releases have done for the scene, so it’s nice to see a developer realize this, and take the genre in completely different direction. DarkWave Game’s new title, Act of Fury: Kraine’s Revenge, is a different kind of shmup for fans of the genre. A game in which, instead of shooting your enemies down, you get as close to them as you can, disabling their systems, and taking them down with a tornado like force that surrounds you.
To start things off, the graphics in Act of Fury are great. I have run into some slight jumping around of the screen when the levels start to scroll left or right, or zoom in and out, like when an air-strike comes in, however it’s nothing game-breaking, but is noticeable, and should be brought up. Aside from this, the variety with enemies is nice, the 4 different environments look great, and the animations are fantastic. The music and sounds go along nicely in passing on the feel of the world in Act of Fury as well.
Gameplay-wise, you’re able to use two different controls schemes, both involving relative touch controls. One gives you a 2:1 movement ratio, while the other gives you a 1:1 ratio. Generally with shmup games, a 1:1 ratio is preferred, so it’s nice that DarkWave included it as an option, but the whole game plays and feels better with the 2:1 default movement. There’s 9 Stages, each with a Normal, and Hell difficulty mode. In the Normal Mode, you’re able to disable enemies projectiles by attacking them (moving next to them), while in Hell Mode, the enemies will keep firing at you no matter what. There are items that you can pick up by destroying buildings, extra lives, bombs, shields, and items that stop time, but if you don’t use an item that you’ve picked up before you pick up another one, it’s gone forever. A big part of the gameplay is waiting until there are multiple objects on the screen that you can destroy, and trying to destroy them all at once, building up your combo, and Fury bar, which is displayed under your health bar, and increases your damage radius, total damage, and increases your score quite a bit. Mastering how to build up your Fury gauge and destroy as many destructible objects at a time is the key to scoring big.
Each of the 9 stages offers 3 star ranks which are based solely on your score. Not at all on how many times you get hit, or how many lives you loose, which is fairly different from every other shoot-em-up game out there. You’re then able to use the stars that you earn to ’buy’ upgrades and power-ups in the shop. There are some more powerful upgrades that you can only use in Hell Mode, which helps drive players to play the Harder Difficulty after beating the Normal Mode. You are able to change how you allocate your stars for power-ups before each stage, so experimentation does come into play, which is a great addition to the core gameplay. I should mention that ,right now, there seems to be a problem with a couple of the stage’s rankings, but is being worked on by the developers and gamers, and a fix for the one or two levels with un-balanced score/star rankings should be available fairly soon.
Act of Fury is a very interesting addition to the shmup genre. It does a fantastic job of mixing the Spirit/Bit Pilot/Silverfish type mechanics with shmup influenced gameplay, and presenting it all in an extremely polished and well rounded package. There are GameCenter and OpenFeint leader boards for each of the 9 stages in both Normal and Hell Modes, as well as a total score leader board for both Modes, along with 32 achievements, all adding immensely to the replay value, which, once you get into the Hell Mode levels, is already fairly high. With the price being $2, it’s definitely a game that’s worth every penny, and then some, especially if you’re a fan of the shoot-em-up genre. Act of Fury also runs on 2nd GEN devices, which, with this genre, is fantastic news.
Act of Fury: Kraine’s Revenge gets a score of 4 out of 5.
With enough titles being released in the AppStore, a lot of them start to play similar to one another, and it’s not too often you’ll come across a game with some interesting mechanics. Lucky for us, there are developers out there that see and recognize this, and don’t want to just make a game that’s like other games, but a game that brings something, not necessarily new to the table, but something that‘s not done often, and can actually pull it off, fitting it into their game flawlessly. P@ssword Studios first release into the iOS scene just so happens to be one of these titles. Unknown Defender, a base defense arcade shooter in which you’ll need to mix up different types of energy to make new types of projectiles, also researching your opponents, and finding out what types of energies they are resilient, and which they are weak against.
The controls in Unknown Defender are pretty simple. You’ll drag your finger across the screen to control which direction you want your gun to point, and then tap on the different energies you have unlocked at the bottom of the screen to fire. Each different type of energy has a certain amount of shots in storage, so you’ll need to be careful when deciding what to shoot at the enemies. After the 5th Stage, you’re able to mix the energies you have unlocked, and can create much more powerful shots. To use these, you’ll need to make sure you have enough of the energies stored up, and then tap on your cannon, which will bring up a menu, brining the game almost to a stand-still, then deciding which mixture of energies you want to fire at the enemies heading towards the bottom of the screen. Once enemies make it to the bottom of the screen, they’ll start attacking your base. There are some enemies that will start attacking with projectiles of their own once they’re about halfway down the screen, which makes for some added strategy in deciding which enemies are a higher priority.
After each Stage, you’ll be able to upgrade your defense, and energies. Here, in the shop, you can unlock energy, upgrade it’s storage, recharge speed, your base’s defense, the mixed energy cool down time, and more. It’s here that you can also mix your different types of energy to create new projectiles. You’re given 18 slots to fill up, each with 2 different types of energy, and later in the game, 4 different types of energy. There are 34 total types of mixes you can make, so experimenting is key. You’re also able to see what types of enemies you will be facing in the next stage, here in the shop area. You’ll get a picture, along with a short description, and details as to what the enemy’s resistances and weaknesses are. Once you’re set, and feel comfortable, you can move on to the next stage.
Unknown Defender can be fairly challenging, especially when you’re new to the game. However, if your base looses all it’s health, “the machine” will turn back time, and let you face the Stage in an Easy Mode. If you fail again, you can keep replaying the Easy Mode.
After you get more accustomed to the game, there’s two more modes alongside the Normal Mode. Rush Mode, which offers weaker enemies, but more of them, and an Extra Mode, which is pretty much a Hardcore Only mode, offering the hardest challenge. Both the Extra and Rush Modes offer the same type of upgrades, and Stage 5 Mixing Energy options that the Normal Mode offers, but with different types of strategies involved. There are only a certain number of Stages in each Mode. Normal Mode has 25, while Rush Mode has 30, and Extra has 15.
For $0.99, it’s an excellent take on the base defense arcade shooter, offering multiple types of gameplay, and strategy, along with loads of experimentation with upgrades and energy mixing. There is no GameCenter or OpenFeint support, which does take a bit away from the replay value, as well as the drive to get the best score you can. It can also feel like your finger that’s controlling the direction of your gun gets in the way quite a bit, though, with the current set-up, and gameplay. But it’s fair to say that P@ssword has given gamers quite a bit of gameplay, with pretty interesting mechanics that are definitely worth checking out if you’re tired of the same games being basically re-skinned and sold within the AppStore. Here’s hoping they stick around, and release, at least, a couple more games for the iOS in the future.
The Tilt To Live and Shmup genres have been mashed together a few times, and have had extremely nice results. FlipShip and Blue Attack come to mind right off the bat. Though it’s no surprise really, as the whole Tilt To Live genre is basically bullet hell without any bullets, dodging and weaving through enemies like you would a bullet onslaught in a Cave title. True Axis (Jet Car Stunts) is the most recent publisher to see the potential with this genre, as they’ve released PomPom’s title, Space Tripper, their highly anticipated iOS port of the PSN and PC game, Astro Tripper.
In Space Tripper, you’ll shoot and dodge your way through 14 levels, split up across 4 different worlds, of wave-enemy battles, with quite a few boss fights, and even a task or two to mix things up, all building up to a final boss battle that could very well cause your heart to explode from adrenaline. One of the first things you might notice about Space Tripper, if you’ve never played it before, is that it is set up more like a shooter than a Tilt To Live type game, making it more reminiscent of Blue Attack than FlipShip or any other TTL genre’d title. However, if you go into the game thinking it’s going to play like your typical shooter, you’ll be in for quite a surprise, and maybe even disappointment.
Space Tripper is controlled by tilting your iDevice, which is where the Tilt To Live comparisons come into play. There are no touch, or relative touch for that matter, controls, which might throw some people off, and in some cases, might result in a few lost sales. But if you go into the game thinking of it more like a TTL type game with more shmup elements than any other TTL title, chances are, you’ll end up pleasantly surprised. There’s also controls for flipping your ship left and right, which is done by tapping on the right side of the screen, and changing your shot from straight on to a much wider shot, by tapping on the left side. The tilt controls are extremely tight, and work very well within the game. There’s tilt sensitivity options if you’d like to try and make it tighter, and an option to set up calibration, which, for some reason, is often forgotten in tilting games, which the only reason I’m bringing it up. The graphics in Space Tripper are ported amazingly well. Even though there aren’t as many particle effects as you’ll find in the PSN version, it definitely doesn’t look dull. A lot of the environments are almost reminiscent of R-Type, as are a lot of the enemies, though everything is done with 3D models, and very modern, it just has that old-school feeling about it all.
The level design is something that really should be brought up as well. The levels are not very big, but do scroll left and right as you move along, and a lot of the designs would be perfect for an FPS multiplayer area battle, with different levels, and great layouts. In a lot of the levels, you’ll end up spending your time on one side of the level, trying to take out an enemy that’s the cause for a ton of spawning enemies, while on the other end, the same enemies are forming an army while waiting for you to finish off the opposite side. This is where the 3D modeling for the levels can be used to your advantage, as you can fly over to the side holding the army, and come up over the edge of a ramp, swing from the bottom to the top portion of the screen, and then back off onto the ramp again, causing all of the enemies projectiles to either fly over you, or hit the bottom portion of the ramp, and then go back in for another strike.
You will need to be careful with how you handle all of the enemies though, as you won’t always have enough time to play cat and mouse with them, because all of the levels have a time limit. This adds to the already fairly high difficulty, and to the adrenaline you’ll pump out while playing Space Tripper. You’re given 3 lives in the beginning, and if you waste those, you’ll have an option to reset your score for one life. Don’t be fooled, even veteran Tilt To Live and Shmup players will have a fairly hard time with the game on Normal difficulty. The game is incredibly fun however, which will give you that ‘one more time’ thought over and over again, until you’ve wasted an hour of your life hammering away at a couple levels. The game is saved once you beat a world though, so you can come back and start a world with the lives that you had when starting that world, even after a game over, and once you finally do beat the game, you can try out the Hard and Very Hard difficulty settings, as well as the Score Attack and Challenge Modes that all provide an insane amount of replay value. On top of that, there’s OpenFeint and GameCenter integration, containing 21 different leader boards, one for each level in Score Attack Mode, one for each difficulty of the Campaign, and one for each of the 4 endless Challenge Levels. Not to mention the 8, incredibly hard to achieve, achievements.
Gamers have been waiting for this iOS port of Astro Tripper for quite some time, and even if you’ve got Astro Tripper, the gameplay in Space Tripper is different enough with the tilt controls that it’s basically a new gameplay experience. You’ll need to change your strategy, as tactics that are memorized, and fairly easy to pull off with a controller, are not to easy to pull off on a device utilizing tilt controls. $3.99 for this Universal game is a great deal, and one that any arcade, old-school, shmup, Tilt To Live, or adrenaline fanatic should jump on immediately. PomPom has definitely shown that they are the equivalent of Cave Inc. within the Tilt To Live genre.
RGB Defense is a new arcade game from Red Winter Software, it is also their first release in the AppStore. In the game, you’ll need to drag cannons around the bottom of the screen, matching their color with the color of the enemies coming down at you in waves from the top of the screen. It might sound simple, and in the beginning it is, but at level 5, you’re not just moving around red, green, and blue cannons, purple and yellow come into the mix, and you’ll be shuffling around 5 different colored cannons while a mass invasion of quick enemies comes barreling down at you. Needless to say, it can get pretty hectic, and drive you crazy.
There are different types of enemies, some that stay in one lane, and only need one hit to be taken out, others that change which lane their in pretty quickly, and others that require multiple hits, and change color after being hit. This mix up of enemies adds quite a bit of extra challenge to the already pretty challenging game. Though with the amount of enemies, how quickly they come at you, how long it takes for a cannon to fire once you get it where you want it, and the cannons sometimes getting stuck in the right corner because of un-responsive controls, it feels like getting past level/wave 7 and anything afterwards is pretty much only accomplished with luck instead of skill.
There are a couple of power-ups that you’ll be ableto get by killing enemies. Health drops, bombs that clear out the screen and hourglasses which slow down the enemies for a very short period of time. There’s also stars that the enemies sometimes drop, and these add to your score.
The graphics, animations, and sound is all nicely done, making it a good looking arcade shooter game. But the sometimes unresponsive controls, seemingly laggy cannon fire, and the very quick jump in difficulty throughout the game make it pretty frustrating. Also, if you do manage to get the controls and timing down, there is no online support, so your scores will end up stuck on your device, for your eyes only. Though with the game only being $0.99, I don’t really consider it a waste of money. It does have quite a bit of potential. Once the control issues are fixed, GameCenter or OpenFeint is added, and the amount of time it takes for a cannon to shoot once you get it into place is sped up a bit, the difficulty level might not need to be changed. Also, if more than one mode is added in the future, this could turn into a very well rounded game.
However, we really won’t know until the game is worked on a bit more, and with the release your game and disappear if it doesn’t sell well dealings of the AppStore, we might never know. Hopefully Red Winter Software won’t give up or get discouraged, because this could turn into an awesome hectic arcade game. We will definitely be keeping our eyes on this one with the hopes that Red Winter Software is in it for the long haul.
You can check out the game on the developers website in the Unity Player, but keep in mind that it responsiveness of controlling with your mouse does not transfer over to the touch screen just yet.
RGB Defense gets a score of 2 out of 5. But we will keep you updated if the game is updated, and could possibly end up re-scoring this one.
Space Junk is a new retro styled shooter by Upside Down Games, a 2 man (Ned Langman, and Greg Michael) indie development studio based in the UK. Ned Langman worked on the 80’s Amiga game, Silkworm, as well as SWIV, and Super SWIV, as well as a favorite of mine, Forsaken for the N64, PSX, and PC, along with more games in between and after. Greg Michael worked on Double Dragon III for the Amiga and Atari in the late 80’s, as well as being the lead programmer for the PSX title, Alien Trilogy, and then also on the oh so memorable Forsaken on the PSX, and, also, many more games. Needless to say, these guys know exactly what they’re doing when it comes to making games.
In Space Junk, you’ll control a little space man through Asteroids type levels, using a joystick to rotate, a button to thrust, and a button to shoot, while clearing out all of the objects in each of the 25 levels. Each of the objects you destroy will break up into smaller objects, and each one of those will break into even smaller objects. After that, once destroyed, a tool will appear, and these are what you’ll need to collect in order to score big points.
The retro vector graphics work well here, and there are plenty of different objects that you will encounter while making your way through the levels. Satellites, moon cheese, dogs, asteroids, space ships, and other various objects and shapes will be the main objects in each level, destroying these while they are in their first appearance stages, gives you a multiplier that‘s connected to the amount of tools that you pickup. For instance, if you‘re thrown into a level with 15 objects, and you destroy 5 of them before they start disappearing, which happens faster if you don‘t thrust around the levels, the amount of tools that you pick up will be multiplied by 5 in the end of the level bonus. The scoring system can get a little confusing, but mainly, if you keep moving around, and destroy as much as you can as quick as you can, while collecting as many dropped tools as you can, your score will shoot up. You are also rewarded for being accurate, getting a bigger bonus score the more accurate you are. There are also UFOs thrown into the mix, and destroying these will release a power-up, which could be a shield, extra life, powered up weapon, or a magnet that collects all dropped tools in the level.
Every 4 levels, you’ll encounter a bonus or challenge stage, where you’ll need to destroy all toolboxes and pick up all the tools in a set amount of time, or avoid a bunch of asteroids for 30 seconds while only using your thruster. This does add a nice break into the frantic gameplay, and if you pull off each challenge or bonus perfectly, can add to your score quite a bit.
You are able to play in portrait or landscape mode, and there are no borders on any of the levels. If you fly to the right, you’ll end up running into objects that were on the left side of the screen, but you can keep flying right forever, and your character is always in the center of the screen. This can be a big help if used right, chasing after UFOs is a lot easier if you go away from them instead of follow them, you’ll run into them quicker, and the same with all the other objects that will be flying all around you.
There are no online leader boards in version 1.0, which is kind of upsetting, considering this is a game that revolves a lot around high-scores. But even without online support at the moment, and only one game mode, Space Junk really is a very nicely done old-style arcade shooter. If you grew up playing games in the 80’s and early 90’s, you’ll most likely really enjoy this one. It’s pretty much an expanded Asteroids, with great vector graphics, awesome music, a really nice scoring system, 3 different difficulties, and cool weapons and power-ups. Being $0.99, and Universal, with talk of iCade and GameCenter support coming in the near future, it’s well worth the price, and then some. The developers are also very responsive on the TA Forums, and their FaceBook page, so with the help of the gamers who are playing this one, I can see it turning into something really special over the next few updates.
With Apple bringing gamers a device that can utilize tilting controls, developers have pretty much been able to invent new genres of games based around that device function. Tilt To Live is one of these types of games, making gamers tilt their iPods to maneuver their triangle through dots/enemies on the screen, using power-ups to defeat them. Since then, there’s been quite a few games that have built on this type of gameplay, and created a whole “Tilt To Live” genre of games for the iOS. The newest addition to the TTL genre is FlipShip, by ByteSize Games, which is their first iOS release. And what a great first release it is.
Expanding on the Tilt To Live idea, you’ll maneuver one of three types of ships around your screen, dodging two different colors of enemy ships, shooting, and using power-ups to take as many of them out as you can. Here’s the catch; to shoot an enemy, your ship must be the same color as that enemy, and to change colors, you simply tap the screen. Also, the longer you stay one color, the bigger your combo gets, and the more points you get per destroyed ship – but that combo score is banked, and only added to your total score once you change the color of your ship again. This can lead to the loss of millions of points if you’re not careful, but also gives gamers a very nice risk/reward gameplay mechanic.
The controls for FlipShip are, like you’d hope for in a game like this, very nice and tight, making weaving in-between groups of enemies doable, if you’re careful. One tap on the screen changes the color of your ship, and resets your combo score, saving the score you’ve built up, and tapping on the icon in the lower right corner (this can also be changed to go into the left corner) will activate your special ability, which is different with each ship. There are quite a few calibration options, but by default, the game will automatically calibrate at the beginning of every game, and every time you resume the game from the pause menu. You can also adjust the sensitivity of the vertical and horizontal tilting aspects.
The graphics are retro/vector styled, and really feel quite nice. There is more detail than most vector styled iOS games within the different ships and enemies. The backgrounds are all pretty much the same, but each time you play, the background and enemies will all be different colors. There’s red, blue, green and yellow, and each time you play, two of these colors are chosen. The music is your typical pumping electronica music, but, like most games, it fits in very well with the action.
Now, with the power-ups, they are all the same for each of the 3 ships, there’s two types of bombs, once regular, and one electrical. The regular bomb blows up everything within it’s radius, and can cause a chain reaction, but generally not a big one. The electrical bomb shocks everything in it’s radius, and jumps from ship to ship if they’re close enough, so you could, in theory, clear out an entire screen of enemies if you time running into this electrical bomb just right. The clock power-up slows down all the enemies on the screen for a short period of time, making it easier to escape large groups of enemies that are the opposite color of your ship, helping you build your combo score even higher. There’s also a power up that boosts your ship in the tilted direction, flying through, and destroying, any ships in it’s way, a seeker bomb, which sends out 6 different missiles, seeking out any enemies on the screen. Then, of course, there’s a shield power-up, and a power-up that refills your ability icon.
As for the abilities; they are different for each ship. There is a slow, average, and fast ship, each also having different firing attributes. The slow ship, called the “Steinway”, fires long projectiles out of a narrow section of the front of the ship, and it’s special ability is sending out 4 drones, 2 of each color. These drones don’t last long, but they can clear out quite a large group of enemies if used right. The average ship, called “Deadeye” shoots a short projectile out of a wide area of the front of the ship, and it’s special ability is called “Starburst”, which sends out a burst of colorless material in 8 directions, destroying everything in it’s path. The 3rd ship is the fast ship, and it’s called the “Preacher”. It’s able to shot in all directions, but it only shoots enemies that are close to it. It’s special ability is being able to change every ship on screen into the current color of the ship, making it pretty easy to build up a huge combo pretty quickly.
There is only one mode within FlipShip, but you are given 6 different difficulties; Very Easy, Easy, Medium, Hard, Very Hard and Insane. All of the different difficulties are on the same difficulty scale, but starting on the harder difficulties starts the game off harder, stays harder, and increases the difficulty quicker. Each different difficulty effects the enemy spawning rate, their speed, what enemy patterns you will see, and how difficult those patterns will be. So really, if you start a game on Very Easy, and you’re good enough, you can make it to the Insane difficulty gameplay. It will just take you longer than if you start out on any difficulty above Very Easy. Insane difficulty throws you right into the hardest difficulty the game will be. This growth of difficulty makes the game accessible to all gamers, and also gives hardcore gamers quite the challenge. However, making it so that less power-ups were present in harder difficulties, and the players abilities charged slower the harder you started the game off at, would be a nice addition to really separate the difficulty modes a bit more. It would also be great to see more gameplay modes in the future. There’s also the feeling that one death is enough to re-start the whole game. If you’re playing, and rack up a score of 1 million points with your first life, and end up loosing it before changing colors and banking that score, it really makes more sense to restart the game than to play through your last 2 lives. Some gamers might also find that 6 difficulties is just too many, especially when they’re all basically the same. There are also some color combinations that don’t mix together too well. For instance, Green and Yellow are a little too much alike, and do not have much contrast. However, Red and Blue, or Blue and Yellow, go together very well, and being able to choose these colors would be great, and would also be a good idea for our color-blind gamers out there.
But FlipShip, as it is now, with GameCenter support, leader boards for each of the difficulties, 50 achievements, 3 ships, accessibility to casual and hardcore gamers, and an exceedingly well done addictive risk/reward combo scoring system, $1.99 for the game is a great price, made even better because right now it‘s on sale for $0.99. It’s got tons of style, and some very intense action. ByteSize Games have proven that the Tilt To Live genre is still alive and thriving, and can still be expanded on. If you’re a fan of the genre, want a challenge, or are a high-score monger, like myself, FlipShip is a no-brainer must buy. I’m definitely looking forward to future updates, and seeing what ByteSize brings to the table with future games.
