Yesterday, we had some not so great news about the not so great performance of Radiangames’ Inferno 2 ($2.99) when it launched on Steam. It’s an interesting discussion to have, I think. Did Inferno 2 bomb on Steam because it was a mobile game? Did Radian not do a good enough job getting the word out about its release? Is it that Radian simply has a knack for making games that are a great fit on mobile, but not so much on desktop? Whatever the case, the end result is that Radian will be focusing solely on mobile going forward, at least for now, which brings me to some actual great news: Radian’s next iOS game is a new dual-stick shooter called Devastator, and it’s coming out really soon. Here’s the trailer.
The main influence behind Devastator is the classic Robotron, although there is some influence from both the movie and video game Tron as well. The basic gist of Devastator is that you’ll face off against wave after wave of enemies in an arena filled with various types of obstacles. While certain enemies may spawn additional enemies on their own, for the most part you’ll see every enemy right from the beginning of each wave, rather than having more and more enemies continuously enter the arena. Once you destroy all the enemies in a wave, it’s on to the next one.
There are a few other tricks to how the scoring and gameplay works, and you can read more about it on Radiangames’ blog. Also, Devastator uses the same engine as Legend of Gigatron, which is a much bigger type of game than Radian’s typical fare that was announced last month and is currently still in development. With the tepid response to Inferno 2 on Steam and Radian’s tough financial situation currently, there’s no telling how long it will be before we’ll be seeing Legend of Gigatron released (if at all). However, on the bright side, look for Devastator to launch in the next 2-3 weeks at a price of $1.99.
