In the fall of 2020 developer James Swiney tickled our nostalgia bones with the highly enjoyable Zelda homage Aruna’s Adventure, which we picked as our Game of the Week on release. Prior to that though, Swiney made a mark in the horizontal shoot ’em up genre with Hectic Space in 2014 and its sequel Hectic Space 2 in 2016. These games didn’t look like much on the surface with their chunky pixels, but man was there ever a secret sauce that made them super fun to play. A great selection of weapons, comically gigantic boss fights, and non-stop action filling every inch of the screen made the Hectic Space games memorable. Now Swiney is back with another horizontal shooter, though not another entry in the Hectic Space series. This one is called Void-X, and it has a pretty cool vibe going on compared to the more stark Hectic Space games. Check it out.

Swiney describes Void-X as a “no apologies arcade shoot em up" which is just a fancy way of saying this game is hard as nails and there’s not much you can do about it except face the music. It’ll feature 9 intense boss fights, cool power-ups and satellite ships to surround yourself with, and more bullet patterns than you can shake your fist at. Like any shooter worth its salt, the name of the game in Void-X will be to survive long enough and put piece together killer combos to increase your high score, and being that this is on mobile there’s an auto-saving feature so you’ll never lose progress even if you have to stop at a moment’s notice. It’ll also support physical controllers, Game Center, and 120fps on devices that have that feature. Void-X will be a premium release at just $1.99 and is launching in a couple of weeks on June 8th.