DarkWave Games, developers of Master of Alchemy [99¢/HD] on the App Store, have revealed their latest game titled Act of God: Hurricane. It’s similar to a vertically scrolling shooter with one major difference – there’s no shooting. Instead, your main character can turn himself into a destructive hurricane to defeat enemies. It’s a pretty interesting concept, and I had a chance to try out a work-in-progress build at GDC last month and was pretty impressed.
The story in Act of God: Hurricane involves you playing a soldier who, due to a military experiment gone bad, finds himself able to turn into a hurricane. You decide to turn against your former military and seek vengeance for turning you into a freak of nature (literally). Plus, they’re just corrupt and bent on world domination, which doesn’t sit so well with you. The game employs a comic book art style, with graphics inspired by classic arcade shmups and neat special effects for your hurricane which can be upgraded with additional abilities.
During my time with the game, I really enjoyed the non-shooting aspect of it. It feels like a melee-based shooter, where the focus is on dodging bullets and sneaking next to enemies to pound on them with your hurricane. I love shooters but have always been slightly annoyed at the auto-firing of practically every shooter on iOS, since originally games like this were all about pounding away at a fire button. The concept in Act of God: Hurricane solves this problem and is a nice alternate take on the genre. The controls are also extremely responsive, as they should be for a game like this. Check out the following video which shows a complete playthrough of one of the levels in Act of God: Hurricane.
Act of God: Hurricane is still in the midst of development, and DarkWave is really interested in collecting feedback about what people like or dislike about the game in order to shape its outcome. They’ve opened a thread in our upcoming games forum where they’ll be listening to any feedback and working towards implementing some ideas into the final product. Definitely drop by the forums and sound off with your opinion of the game, and we’ll keep our eye on Act of God: Hurricane and bring you more from the game as it nears release.
