The Quadsphere has been working on the latest game in their Icarus-X ($2.99) series of shoot ’em ups, and you can expect it this spring with Icarus-X: Tides of Fire, coming to iPad and desktop this spring. They’re promising this one will have an influence from roguelikes and dungeon-crawlers, as there’s going to be ship leveling, loot to collect, skill trees to upgrade and even permadeath modes to try and tackle. Um, in a bullet hell shmup? Maybe I’ll stick with casual mode without permadeath. Check out a trailer for the game, available with 60 frames per second video, so watch it on a device that supports it if possible:

The game’s going to have 15 stats to min-max, including the size of your hitbox, with 4 different difficulties, 3 ship classes, and enemy waves that are randomly-generated. The game will launch for desktop and iPad at first this spring, with a universal version planned at some point down the road. The mix of shmup and RPG elements sounds interesting, so keep an eye on the forum thread for the game.