SpaceX – A Free Shoot'em Up
posted by arn on February 9th, 2009 7:01 AM EST in Free, Shooter, iPhone games, iPod touch games
Ketara Software has released their first space shooter SpaceX [App Store] as a free download for a limited time. The developer describes his intention:
The idea was to make a fun, fast-paced, and beautiful and deep game which invokes the feeling of the early 90s shooters I used to play as a kid. As you fly more missions, you can upgrade your ship, weapon systems, etc., and control the ship using touches or tilt controls.
The game offers a traditional vertical scrolling shoot'em-up with tilt or touch controls as well as a number of upgrades in between levels.
Video shows a weapons-upgraded ship:
Overall a reasonably implemented shoot'em-up that will waste some time and is worth the free download. The inclusion of a global high-score is also nice.
App Store Link: SpaceX, Free for limited time
appsniper found it for me this morning, started off a little slow but totally got into it after upgrading at the end of level 1. 2 thumbs up!
What's nice is that you can use the tilt & touch controls simultaneously.
A very nice game, considering the price (free)!
The controls aren't too bad as is the ability to buy/sell different ship upgrades such as armor and weapons.
A good start and lots of potential!
A couple little glitches I noticed in this earliest release:
* Touch controls didn't always work for me–the ship would slow to a crawl every so often, which didn't happen when tilting. (Too bad–I found touch to be more precise.)
* It wasn't clear enough which weapons conflict with others, so it's easy to waste money (but players will learn that).
* I ended up with NO weapons, and no way to get back to the "store" screen to get any. It shouldn't be possible to leave the store "unarmed."
Further control analysis: I think touch steering only works if you hold the phone PERFECTLY still–otherwise tilt takes precedence, and a slight tilt = slow movement, so the effect is that your ship slows to a crawl.
You can't really hold the phone perfectly still while tapping it, so I don't think the two control modes can be combined in this way.
Looking forward to how this evolves! Seems like a very complete game, well worth paying for with some minor tweaks.
Great game! Just needs some work with the buy menu. Maybe show the cool stats page after each level end. Music is cool. Could use some sound effects.
Thanks! Cool game!
An excellent game. I highly recommend this to anyone.
I don't know if anyone knows the game, but SpaceX is surprisingly similar to an old computer shooter called Raptor: Call of the Shadows. A lot of the enemies are suspiciously alike, which is a good thing because this game is great.