Home » Apps with tag 'shmup'

Galak-Z Variant Mobile brings the frenetic space shooter to iOS and Android

News By Christian Valentin, 5 years, 8 months ago
Galak-Z Variant Mobile brings the frenetic space shooter to iOS and Android

Originally released in 2015 for PC and PS4, Galak-Z Variant Mobile, as the name suggests, is a modified port designed to work for touchscreens, letting mobile gamers enjoy Galak-Z's evasive combat and relentless enemies, both mechanical and alien. Perhaps the most critical aspects of Galak-Z that seperates it from other hectic shoot-em-ups is its combination of stealth and transforming mech actions. Enemy ships have line of sight and your ship makes different amounts of noise based on movement, so you can flank enemies and ambush them from behind for extra damage or just hide to avoid a particularly tough foe you can't defeat yet. Or you could transform into your mech form to deflec…

Blast through the monsters of the deep in aquatic shmup Earth Atlantis [Review]

News By Christian Valentin, 5 years, 8 months ago

Hands-on with Beat the Beat, the indie shmup firing on all dubstep cannons

Feature By Peter Willington, 9 years, 1 month ago
Hands-on with Beat the Beat, the indie shmup firing on all dubstep cannons

Coming to iOS, Android, and Windows Phone in summer of 2015, Beat the Beat is a rhythm action dubstep shooter, in which the enemies are brought into play and react to the music being played. As you can probably expect, this combo of dynamic and bass heavy beats, mixing with intense shooting and dodging makes for some incredibly gameplay - gameplay that really needs to be seen (and heard) to be believed. Which is exactly what you can do by pressing play on the video below.…

Hands-on with Rapid Star: The Space, the bullet-infested shmup with an auto-runner lilt

Feature By Peter Willington, 9 years, 8 months ago
Hands-on with Rapid Star: The Space, the bullet-infested shmup with an auto-runner lilt

Auto-runners are ten a penny these days, and shmups aren't exactly a brand new idea on mobiles and tablets, but if you combine the two - and add a Scramble aesthetic - you end up with something quite unique. Enter Rapid Star: The Space, a terrible name for a pretty solid game. You control the ship on the left of the screen, it automatically fires lasers into baddies, and you dodge any bullets headed your way. The game is brutal, and it certainly doesn't expect you to survive for very long, so at the end of a run you're given a score and can compete with friends for highscores. Take a look at the hands-on below for footage of the game in motion.…

Final Flight of the Perseus Review

Review Third Party Ninjas LLC By Alex Beech, 9 years, 9 months ago
Final Flight of the Perseus Review

Final Flight of the Perseus is a free shmup that continues the legacy of arcade classics like Galaga. Controlling the inevitably doomed starship Perseus, you must battle waves of attacking enemy aliens until your reactions fail you, and you explode into spacedust. Direct controls help you to navigate the single-screen war zones in seconds. Your crude, pixelated ship fires endlessly upwards as you drag it around the screen, dodging the equally ugly alien aggressors. Unfortunately, the…

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Sky Force 2014 Review

Review Infinite Dreams Inc. By Alex Beech, 9 years, 9 months ago
Sky Force 2014 Review

The original Sky Force came out on mobile devices in 2004. It was a great looking mobile game for its day, and fantastic shooter to boot. Now, a decade later, Sky Force 2014 is looking to do the same again with the benefit of modern tech. Sky Force 2014 retains the tight shmup combat and  vertically scrolling levels of the original. As before, you must attack approaching targets, while trying to avoid the halestorm of bullets the game throws at you. A responsive one-to-one contr…

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Free-to-play shmup Sky Force 2014 has just flown onto the App Store

News By Alex Beech, 9 years, 9 months ago
Free-to-play shmup Sky Force 2014 has just flown onto the App Store

Sky Force was an impressive-looking mobile shump back in the Java days of 2004. Now, ten years later, Infinite Dreams has bought it back as free-to-play shooter Sky Force 2014. A lot has changed in a decade, most notably in the visual department. While the original looked good for its time, this new instalment is stunning. The 3D graphics models bring notable depth to the smooth top-down combat. This is made all the more impressive thanks to the beautiful explosion and lighting effects that fill every screen. The one-to-one touch controls have you dragging your little ship around the screen constantly shooting its cannons. However, in an interesting twist to this tried and tested system…

Free vertical shooter Final Flight of the Perseus gets new Expert Mode

News By Alex Beech, 9 years, 9 months ago
Free vertical shooter Final Flight of the Perseus gets new Expert Mode

Final Flight of the Perseus is a vertical shmup developed by Third Party Ninjas. Despite already being free, the team has clearly decided that it wasn't offering enough value, and has just added a new Expert Mode. The wave-based shump offers short bursts of icreasingly challenging sci-fi combat. Every enemy killed earns you in-game cash, which you can then spend on upgrades to power up your cannons, or to replenish your shields. As any good star pilot will tell you, dropping to zero shields in Final Flight of the Perseus is dangerous. This is where the new Expert Mode comes in, encouraging you to flight in this prone state to earn double cash rewards. Resist the urge to power up yo…

AngerForce - Strikers Review

Review Screambox By Alex Beech, 9 years, 10 months ago
AngerForce - Strikers Review

If you have ever played a shmup then AngerForce - Strikers will hold few surprises. It's a familiar story: a series of vertically-scrolling levels which have you tracing your craft's path a halestorm of bullets, trying to destroy any enemies in your way. AngerForce you offers three characters to choose from, each with their own special attacks. Which you select will be dependent on your play style, with characters like the robot offering powerful laser attacks that do huge d…

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Arcade shooter Robots Love Ice Cream has just invaded the App Store

News By Alex Beech, 9 years, 11 months ago
Arcade shooter Robots Love Ice Cream has just invaded the App Store

Everyone enjoys ice cream, but none more so than the robots in Ayopa Games’s new shoot-‘em-up Robots Love Ice Cream. Blending Galaga with Defender, Robots Love Ice Cream asks you to protect planets from mechanised marauders intent on stealing all of their chilled snacks. You will have to shoot the invaders from the sky by driving your ice cream van armed with weaponized Mr Whippy around each of the games tiny 2.5D worlds. You can upgrade your tasty arsenal of popsicles and hot fudge fundays by collecting Sprinkletonuim from fallen enemies. These will help you build your combos and highscore as you try to complete the game’s many challenges. If Robots Love Icecrea…

Endless wild west shmup Bounty Rush is out now on the App Store

News By Alex Beech, 10 years ago
Endless wild west shmup Bounty Rush is out now on the App Store

Considering the gun-focused nature of wild west-era fiction, it is odd that you don’t see more of it on the App Store. Developer Boaz de Jong has spotted this gap in the market and created Bounty Rush, a free-to-play endless-shmup set on the American frontier. Bounty Rush casts you as a bounty hunter chasing down wanted outlaws. To do this, you have to weave your little cowboy through four lanes of gun-toting combat, shooting the bad guys, avoiding obstacles, and trying not to riddle Native Americans with bullets. That last one may sound easy but, as the action speeds up, picking out bandits from innocent bystanders becomes incredibly difficult. With only three lives that are…