Swedish indie developer Erik Svedang has recently released a new game named ‘Tri Tri Triobelisk’ [99¢] for the iPad. I’ve been following Erik’s work for a while, so was totally interested in checking it out. Any discussion of Tri Tri Triobelisk really begins with his earlier game, Shot Shot Shoot [$1.99], so let’s examine that first.

In 2010, Erik released Shot Shot Shoot! for the iPad. It’s one of those games you may not have heard of, however Frank Lantz (the designer of Drop7 [$4.99]), is quoted as describing it as “the first truly great game for the iPad. Essential."

Erik describes his game as a “Digital board-game" for the iPad; it could also be easily described as a top-down shooter. Two players sit facing each other, on the same iPad and each player has five squares on their side of the board. The goal is to destroy your opponents five squares before they destroy yours. Tapping on one of your squares fires a shot directly towards your opponent, but if you hold your finger down, you can optionally redirect that shot while it’s traveling, allowing your bullet to swerve around other bullets or to change targets. This is best illustrated by watching a gameplay video:

Shot Shot Shoot is a game of strategy. Some players fire strategically, picking their shots, while others prefer to play offensively, mashing the buttons to overwhelm the opposition with a swarm of shots. If you fire like crazy, you’ll end up defenseless, as you have a limited supply of bullets which take a while to regenerate. Alternatively, you can shoot at grey squares in the middle of the screen to collect bullets, but your opponent is seeking these too. Another strategic element is that the more shots you have active on the screen, the slower they all move. This means a single shot can travel faster and often zips across the screen to save the day. Many frantic and exciting games are won by a millisecond.

This month, Erik released Tri Tri Triobelisk which is promoted as a faster and more extreme remix of Shot Shot Shoot. Check out the trailer compared to the previous Shot Shot Shoot video:

The unusual title is named after electronic artist Triobelisk, who composed the energetic dance soundtracks. The minimalistic square graphics of Shot Shot Shoot are replaced with a space backdrop and triangles replace the squares, with shots now leaving different trails behind them. The game modes, basic gameplay and controls remain unaltered from Shot Shot currently, however Erik revealed in the thread on our forums that he’s currently developing power-ups as a future addition to Tri Tri, which I can’t wait to see.

While I’m a fan of both games, it’s unusual to have two games with the same basic gameplay, from the same developer. People with Shot Shot already may be hesitant to buy the new game as well and would probably have preferred that game to be extended too via an update of sorts. Having played both games, I appreciate each for different reasons. Shot Shot has simple and clean graphics.  Tri Tri has more energy and more music and may have more widespread appeal.

If you’re not sure which game to try, I recommend Tri Tri Triobelisk. The “introductory price" for Tri Tri is currently cheaper than Shot Shot and has potential to be updated. Erik plans to keep Shot Shot as the “minimalistic gentleman’s game" with Tri Tri being the “crazy over the top version". If you specifically love artistic minimalistic games, get Shot Shot, otherwise Tri Tri Triobelisk seems to be the way to go.