Backflip Studios has released their latest free game to the App Store. The release of Buganoids follows their other summer launches including Tunnel Shoot, Graffiti Ball, and Ninjump. We profiled Backflip Studios’ success in the App Store back at WWDC. As of this writing, they report that their games have seen over 48 million downloads with up to 2 million unique players playing each day.
For this latest App Store entry, Backflip enlisted the help of a developer we’re very familiar with around here – Dan Bliss. Bliss’ App Store career [iTunes link] has been pretty much exclusively dedicated to retro-inspired games, so his involvement made a lot of sense for Buganoids.
The developers accurately describe Buganoids as “Tempest" meets “Centipede" with a dash of “Gyruss" thrown in. The game is a circumferential shooter where your goal is to destroy the spawning bugs coming up from the planet. Your only ability is to shoot down — straight into the planet. So, in order to adjust your aim, you need to walk around the planet. If a bug makes its way to the surface, you’re going to have to shoot form the opposite side to take it out. It’s a pretty simply mechanic that offers a surprising amount of depth.
The game offers five different weapons across seven different globes and includes 3 levels of difficulty. Like all of Backflip’s free games, they are ad-supported by offer the customer the ability to buy-out of the ads.
There’s both an iPhone and iPad version of the game, and they are both free. So, no reason not to try it out.