I often find myself thinking “I wonder what Ecco the Dolphin would have been like as a vertical shoot ’em up?" I guess I don’t have more important stuff to think about. But it is sort of intersting to think about how the vast majority of shooters feature some sort of flying craft shooting down other flying crafts, or aliens, or asteroids. There’s just not a lot of outside-the-box thinking when it comes to themes in this genre. Well Pixel Pajama Studios is preparing to deliver my fantasy with their new game Sonar Smash. They released their debut title Astral Defense back in July, a very competent but also very typical space shooter. Through the process of exploring re-skinning the game they came up with the idea of a dolphin blasting sonar waves to take out enemies. Eventually that simple re-skin blossomed into its own fully fleshed out new game, which you can see in the trailer below.

It’s so lovely to see a shooter that’s not your typical space theme, and especially when you’re dealing with an environment like the ocean, there is no shortage of amazing creatures to draw inspiration from in terms of enemies and hazards. As you can see at the end of that trailer, Sonar Smash is set for release on April 8th, and it’ll be coming to iOS, Android, Mac, and PC. If you like the look of it and want to make sure you don’t miss out on its release, then you can pre-order the iOS version on the App Store here, pre-register for the Android version on Google Play here, or pre-order the desktop version on Itch.io here.