After being soft-launched for a LONG time, Atari has finally officially released their city building space shooter hybrid Lunar Battle (Free) worldwide. Developed by On5, we originally talked about Lunar Battle when it first soft-launched way back in September of last year (I told you it’s been a long time). In the more than a year since then, the game has been updated and tweaked a number of times into the final product that you can play today.

In Lunar Battle you find yourself aboard a ship that’s gotten lost in space, far away from your home planet of Earth. The Captain of your ship suggest landing on a nearby planet and setting up a temporary base, and then sending you out to mine some resources from nearby asteroids. Just as you’ve built your first building and are heading out into space to mine, space pirates interfere with your plans and your simple mining task becomes a space battle.

It’s actually a really cool premise for a game, and makes a lot of sense in the context of a city building game blended with a shooter. The shooting portions are a little more tactical than action-based, as you’ll tap to position your ship and you’ll need to be almost constantly moving in order to try and avoid enemy fire. Things like the placement of your weapons on your ship also come into play as if you’re not pointing in the right direction it’s possible your weapons won’t even make contact with the enemy. As more and more enemies pop into the battle, these become crucial factors to consider.

One thing to know about Lunar Battle is that as neat as the concept is this is just about as free to play as a game can get. Hardly surprising, but it’s sure to be a determining factor for people who don’t like the typical free to play setup. If you DO enjoy those types of games and have a thing for city building and tactical space warfare, Lunar Battle seems pretty solid so far. You can check it out for free with the link below and you can find more impressions and information about the game in its accompanying forum thread.