Galaxy Invaders - Eclipse Squadron

While there is some value in the generic arcade shooting and the low price, very little effort has been made to hide the game’s mobile origins. This shoot ’em up doesn’t have much to offer because the entire experience feels like playing on a mobile phone or tablet. Unfortunately, that includes gameplay confined to only about a third of the screen and a very poor control scheme that relies solely on the mouse, with no support for keyboard or gamepad. Your ship fires automatically, but instead of simply moving it with the mouse, you must press and hold the left mouse button at all times. This quickly becomes uncomfortable and tiring for your fingers. The reason for this design choice becomes clear with the power ups that appear at the bottom of the screen when collected. Because there are no keyboard shortcuts, you must release control of the ship, quickly move the mouse to the bottom of the screen, click the power up to activate it, and then move back to the ship. Power ups are temporary and include additional wingmen with various weapons or a boost that greatly increases firing speed and the number of projectiles. The main mode takes you through 50 stages. Each stage features several waves that may include enemy ships, which fly onto the screen and form a standard Space Invaders style formation, or asteroids that move toward the bottom of the screen. Enemy ships fire at you, and although you can weave between their bullets, you can also take a few hits before being destroyed. A boss appears every fifth stage, but these encounters are simply larger enemies with more bullets and are not particularly challenging. Stages are selected on a map, but after completing a stage you are always returned to the bottom of the map at stage one, forcing you to scroll back to your current position each time. Completing a stage for the first time grants several rewards. These include money, spins on a wheel of fortune that can award additional money, up to three stars depending on how many enemies you destroy, and something called a spaceship boost, which appears to serve no purpose and is likely a leftover element from the game’s mobile design. The same applies to rewards for destroying enemies and meteorites. These simply increase a counter that tracks how many you have destroyed during your career and have no practical use. It is easy to obtain all rewards on your first attempt at a stage, but aside from the three star rating, the other rewards do not receive a checkmark on the stage selection screen, making it appear as if you never earned them. The mobile design is also evident in the other three modes, which are nearly identical with only minor differences. Today Quest is simply a random stage, while Treasure Hunt and Free Diamonds consist of random waves where defeated enemies drop coins and diamonds respectively. None of these rewards are used for anything meaningful. They only increase your credit balance, which serves as the game’s currency. Credits can be used to purchase movies and ships. Movies are a complete waste of credits and buying them feels almost like a scam, as they are far from actual movies. The selection screen displays attractive painted images, but clicking on them opens a screen with three static characters. Every movie shows the same scene and the same characters, and each contains exactly seven speech bubbles with short lines of dialogue. The only feature that feels worthwhile is the collection of ships. There are quite a few available, each costing significantly more than the previous one and each firing unique projectiles. More expensive ships seem to have stronger bullets, but since there are no statistics provided, the only way to compare them is to replay the same stage with different ships. In the end, the difference in damage is small enough that it hardly matters.