Over the past few years, developer Shelly Alon has released two quirky and enjoyable puzzle games for iOS in 2014’s Partyrs ($0.99) and 2015’s Sputnik Eyes ($1.99). So when we learned earlier this week that his next game would be a vertical shoot ’em up, a genre that’s notorious for the type of frantic action not seen in Alon’s previous puzzle games, I wasn’t quite sure how it would turn out. This new game is called Glitchskier ($1.99) and now that it’s finally available I can answer my own sense of curiosity: It turned out brilliantly!

Glitchskier uses a hacker sort of theme complete with a faux desktop and installation.txt help file. As a totally superfluous feature you can even drag and rearrange those files around the desktop. Neat! Optional monitor curvature distortion and static effects just add to the theme, and the actual playfield is made up of glitchy pixels and ASCII characters. The whole production feels ripped right out of some Hollywood hacking movie. Check out the trailer to see the cool visual style of Glitchskier in action.

Visuals are only part of the equation though, and as neat as Glitchskier looks, its visuals are thankfully secondary to the excellent shoot ’em up gameplay. This falls somewhere between a more traditional shooter and a bullet hell game, and the campaign setup reminds me of Downwell ($2.99) as you’ll play through a set of randomly-generated levels complete with boss fights in order to “beat" the game. There’s an unlockable endless mode too so you can keep the party going. Also similar to Downwell are the many unlockable color palette options to choose from.

I’ve only spent a short amount of time with Glitchskier so far, but I’m already loving what I’m seeing. I have a feeling that there’s plenty of nuance and hidden things to learn about the game, and I’m really looking forward to that. The folks in our forums sure are loving it as well, so if you enjoy a good shooter and retro hacker aesthetic hit up the link below to check out Glitchskier.