Originally starting life as a PSP Mini, Flying Hamster from developer The Game Atelier made its way to iOS this past January. A horizontally scrolling shooter, Flying Hamster’s gameplay harkened back to shooters of days past, with an unforgiving difficulty and strict arcade-style level structure. The old-school design offered no mid-level checkpoints, and losing all of your lives meant starting all the way over at the beginning.

That’s not a bad thing at all though, especially if you like classic shmups, but it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. Aside from the gameplay, the strongest aspect of Flying Hamster was its adorable style and fantastic sound and visuals, which we noted in our original review. There’s almost no end to the zaniness of the enemies, environments, and weaponry in Flying Hamster, and it really is a sight to behold. There’s just something fun about playing this game that brings a smile to my face very time.

Now you can check out Flying Hamster for yourself for absolutely nothing for a limited time. Shortly after the iPhone release in January, an iPad native version was released, and that’s free right now as well. In fact, the iPad version actually tempered the difficulty somewhat by virtue of showing more of the playing area thanks to its larger screen.

Chances are if you even remotely enjoyed watching the above trailer, then you’ll get a huge kick out of playing Flying Hamster. It isn’t the best shmup on the App Store, but it’s certainly one of the wackiest. Definitely give Flying Hamster a try while you’re able to grab it for free.