Galactic Wars EX

It is not often I play a shoot em up that makes me say wow... Well, this game has done that in all the right ways. This game has a lot more depth and strategy then most shoot em ups. It is a shoot em up that has speed running strats, high score grinding and achievement hunting. Each run feels fresh and while the game is hard... It is extremely fair. At the core of the game is the arcade heart and soul and it really feels like a love letter to a bygone era of gaming. The game has elements of so many classics while putting a unique spin on the format. Let's break the game down: Mechnics: Ships fly very different from one another Levels introduce a new environmental elements at just add to possible ways the player can die. Power Ups while not picked up block BOTH your shots and the enemies shots. Power Ups are lost when hit by enemies (making the game hard but fair) Power Ups are limited in certain stats by the ship you pick Power Ups can be changed by the player simply shooting them to change it to what ever they want. Enemy waves have a set spawn however most will behave different run to run to keep each run feeling Fresh. Levels This game has 3 levels that introduce new in game mechanics. Level 1 Space = starter level designed to force the player to understand the games power-up mechanics Level 2 Asteroid Field = The more reckless you shoot here the Harder it gets. The Asteroids will kill both you and the enemies (pro hint for strat) Level 3 The Hive = The level has honey combs growing to block your path while some also randomly spawns extra enemies when blown up. Pathing is key to survival here. Ships This game features 3 ships feel and fly totally different. With how different they all fly that just add to level of replayability. One is a Tank (slow but massively powerful). One is a Speed Demon (Super Fast but weak damage output without power ups). One is a general specialist (Jack of all traits master of none) With all that said at it's price point I doubt You can go wrong. I did not mention everything in the game since this is not a guide. Enjoy the game! Embrace the grind! Have fun and vibe with the community. ***As a side note*** The Dev has a discord that he is very active in. He clearly cares about the game and the community the game makes so Extra Bonus points for that.

[code]Steam Curator : ==> [u][i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38545912]Right to the Point![/url][/i][/u] <== Follow us! [i]If you want to discover new games that you are unaware of or just want to explore our recommendations![/i] [/code] [h1]Intro[/h1] Galactic Wars EX is a retro arcade shoot'em up in the same vein as some classics from the golden era of shoot'em ups like Gradius,R-Type and more. [h1]Hardcore to the Bone![/h1] That being said, this means that it is made that way and it follows the old-school style.While the game consists of only 3 stages and might give the impression that it's a short game,it certainly isn't!The high level of difficulty will make you Die,D-Die,RE-die...sweat and Retry! [h1]Gameplay[/h1] This is where the game really shines - This is the strongest point for sure. The game neither offers auto-shooting,nor encourages button mashing.Instead, it has an energy bar that drops when you shoot and regenerates by time.You will have to be accurate and you will have to earn every kill!(Bonus - You will build fingers with muscles to show them to your friends!) There are 3 ships to choose from.1)A slow one with strong attack 2)A quick one with weak attack and 3)One that is more balanced (something between the previous two). The power-ups that you find,can change your ship's stats accordingly.You can upgrade your speed,power or shield and make every ship even better,but be careful...if you take a hit you will lose this stat.The power-ups can also block your shots. [h1]Graphics-Visuals[/h1] The beautiful pixel art and the overall cute visuals,complete the retro aesthetic of the game. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] Galactic Wars EX is a hardcore shoot'em up like the ones that were made back in the good old days.It is definitely not for the soft ones or for those that want a relaxing experience.If you want to beat it,you will need much patience...you will need to SWEAT A LOT!However,being hard,doesn't mean it's unfair.You just need to be accurate and take your time to learn the game.Old-school gamers will appreciate it even more. [code]Steam Curator : ==> [u][i][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38545912]Right to the Point![/url][/i][/u] <== Follow us! [i]If you want to discover new games that you are unaware of or just want to explore our recommendations![/i] [/code]

So first off, if you're looking for an easy shmup, this is not that at all. This is an old school arcade difficulty at heart but that is what makes this game great. So if arcade shmup is what you like then look no further. This game is fair and hard. Everything you do has a consequence and is your own fault. You can't just shoot aimlessly since you have a energy guage and need to be mindful of your shots. Power ups block your shots as well as some enemies shots so every shot counts. The ships are all different in the own ways. One is your general all around ship, another is your speedy less powerful and last is the slow moving powerhouse, so Theres a ship for different play styles. The games difficulty moves up from level to level. It's only 3 levels long but each has its own mechanics and feels different and allows you to learn as you go and replay as you will die many times trying to get to the finish. Overall fantastic game for the price point. Just go in with the mindset that this game is made to be hard as was arcade games back then but you will not be disappointed by this. Only feedback would be a menu to make adjustments like changing control layouts otherwise fantastic!

Great shoot'em on a budget for the old school fans. If you liked Gradius and R-Type back in the day you'll like this one. Not a lot of extra features or modes but for the super cheap price it's a good shmup.

Love the retro aesthetics!

[b]Introduction[/b] Galactic Wars EX is a retro arcade game inspired pixelart horizontal shmup. Choose from three ships, destroy waves without miss to increase your multiplier, pick up power ups to boost your ship and make it through all three levels to clear the game. At the start of the pandemic Itch had a big giveaway with many free games including the original Galactic Wars which I tried for a bit. I liked the art and gameplay enough to follow VolcanoBytes. That's how I learned about Galactic Wars EX, I'm not into Kickstarters but I did keep track of the progress. [b]Game[/b] The UI is a bit minimalistic with no menu or remapping options but there are function keys to use (see the manual), for remapping you can use Steam's Controller Configuration. The game has no auto-fire, instead your weapon uses energy with a limited supply. The HUD has an energy bar if it turns red your firing rate drops. Although it may give you a bit of an unfair advantage you can add auto-fire through Steam's Controller Configuration. When used in moderation in addition to regular fire it works really well and prevents a sore thumb. Best way to play it imo :) Missiles are powerful but slow and can be destroyed. Best to fire them upclose or at least with a clear line of sight. [b]Powerups[/b] There are four types of powerups, weapon upgrades, missiles, speed upgrades and shields. Shoot a powerup to switch the type. If you're already maxed out on missiles you will fire two, if you're maxed out on another type you get full energy for a couple seconds allowing you to mash fire without repercussion. If you get hit you lose a weapon upgrade, speed upgrade and a shield but you often get the chance to pick one back up right away. If you get hit with no shields you lose a ship and all its upgrades. [b]Conclusion[/b] Personally I don't like having to mash the fire button. The limited energy weapon mechanic does make it stand out between other shmups. I can only applaud that, all shmups should be unique and this one is. Looks great as well. After some initial frustration the game grew on me and (with Steam's auto-fire) became enjoyable for me. I found the game pretty challenging but with every subsequent run it gets easier. I've cleared the game a few times to improve my score. [b]Video[/b] Game clear / highscore chase: https://youtu.be/MSXrVFdrC_M

This is not a review, these are just my brief first impressions of the game. This one hurts because I really wanted to like this one. If you're a diehard arcade fan, you might really enjoy this. There's a sense of something really addicting and fun here but I just could not for the life of me enjoy it enough to continue playing. The game isn't broken or anything, but the way it’s designed just leads to unimaginable frustration. Video version for those who prefer the format: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qiyaggw_lE&feature=youtu.be Essentially, it boils down to balancing. In this game you can choose from 3 ships that have different stats. Ship stats start at a bare minimum and can be upgraded with power ups in game. The power-ups aren't persistent of course so you'll be collecting them as you blast down enemy ships and improving your ship as you go. This is fun as you can shoot powerups to change what stat they give you. You can make your ship faster, do more damage, grab missiles, shields or have more weaponry. The problem is when you take damage. Every game handles this differently, sometimes it's instant death, sometimes it's a life bar, whatever, but this game does things a bit differently. First off when you take damage, your ship is downgraded. You lose the powerups you've collected with sometimes one coming out of your ship as a way of throwing you a bone but the recovery time is quite low so you can lose all your upgrades fairly quickly if you're not careful. The problem is that this can be very frustrating depending on what ship you're using. There's a ship that has a really slow minimum speed and it's actually unfun to play unless you get the speed powerup, but since its maximum speed is just 1 point above the minimum, every hit you take will knock you back down to minimum speed, it's just a terrible feeling ship to fly in this case as you cant even outrun bullets at minimum speed, having this powerup downgrade just takes the wind out of your sales every time you get hit and it becomes less engaging and frantic and more frustrating and slow, and getting hit and losing your speed in the slow ship feels like agony. Now you might be wondering what shields do since I mentioned it before. Well all they do is prevent you from losing a life, but you still lose your upgrades incrementally too. Lose all your lives and its game over but you can continue with credits, similar to an arcade. The problem is that if you do continue with credits, you're starting with no upgrades and doing this, especially on bosses, is super frustrating, you might as well restart the mission sometimes. Thankfully, you can change your ship out which is a relief because having to use that slow ship on a boss fgiht with no upgrades is actual torture. In my opinion, the shield power-up should prevent you from losing some of your upgrades, it just makes the difficulty a helluva lot more punishing. I could get good at old arcade games given the time but that depended on my enjoyment, and this one I just can't enjoy. I don’t even have a desire to beat the first boss despite trying my hardest. There's also just weird balancing in general. Like you'd think the missile powerup, a finite resource in this game, would be your ace in the hole that would help you defeat enemies or bosses better, but no, it's not. Missiles are super slow and they just fire in a wavy line. They sometimes get destroyed before they even reach their target. It's so wimpy, every other arcade game I’ve played, bombs, missles, nukes, whatever, they are your lifeline and they are always fun to use and worth saving, here, they aren't. And that's just baffling to me, especially for a game that prides itself on being as close to an original arcade game as possible. At least I was happy to give my tokens to those old machines I used to play on, I don’t even want to give this one my time in its current state. There are a few other problems too like that there's no options menu for adjusting things like volume or resolution and that led to a bunch of issues for me since I had to fool around in windows just to get the screen to display properly and even then I had to keep it in windowed mode. There's also the issue of attacking in game. You have a power gauge that goes down as you shoot and the lower it is, the slower you'll shoot. The problem is that there's no auto fire button, this is especially aggravating when you get an unlimited energy power up and have to mash the button really fast to get off a lot of shots at incoming enemies. Not having an auto-fire button is infuriating in these moments and you’ll be tapping like crazy.. Can I please play this game without developing carpal tunnel syndrome? At least that’s accurate to some of the older arcade games I used to play. Overall I really wanted to recommend this one but I simply can't. It's just too frustrating for me to enjoy. If the game gets a few updates and tweaks I can easily see myself flipping this to a recommendation. Thanks for reading. We have a curator page if you wanna check out our recommendations: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/34957488-The-Technical-Miracle/

[b]Galactic Wars EX[/b] è uno shooter a scorrimento laterale, reso in una curata pixel art in 16 bit che assieme ai temi sonori, restituisce una fedele esperienza anni '80 da arcade-cabinato. 👾 Partendo da qualcosa di simile che mi viene in mente direi [i]R-Type[/i], ma Galactic Wars EX si differenzia per una meccanica dello sparo più dosata. Qui, aprire il fuoco significa controllare una barra di stato che si riempe. Come un buffer. Non si spamma un solo bottone. Quindi sono richiesti precisione e pazienza. Bisogna rimanere piuttosto attenti su ciò che accade sullo schermo, altrimenti si verrà sopraffatti dalla potenza di fuoco avversaria. Sull'HUD di gioco forse avrei rivisto qualcosa, siccome ci ho messo un pò per inquadrarlo. Raccomando la Co-op in quanto a divertimento. Il gioco ne guadagna come sempre in tutti i termini. Sul resto, troviamo le classiche componenti: 3 navicelle da scegliere con diverse caratteristiche, diversi power ups da prendere, boss e miniboss. Il tutto scorre su fluidi 60fps, indispensabili per questo genere di azione. Si conclude in breve tempo se sarete abili in questo genere di giochi 🙂

Al haber consumido pocos títulos de este género he caído irremediablemente en el prejuicio 'juego de navecitas = aporrear botones y esquivar'. Nada más lejos de la realidad. Galactic Wars EX tiene un gran e inteligente diseño que le da identidad propia. La mecánica de disparo dispone de una barra que actúa como cooldown, consiguiendo así que aporrear el botón de disparo sea perjudicial. Eso sí, al acertar los tiros esta se recarga un poco, con lo cual premia la puntería. Dispones de tres naves diferentes; la lenta pero que pega duro, la rápida pero que pega flojo y la balanceada. Cada una de estas tiene 3 stats base que podrán incrementar o reducirse a lo largo de la partida (daño, velocidad y escudo). Para incrementarlas hasta su máximo deberás recoger las mejoras que algunos enemigos soltarán al destruirse. Lo mejor de esto es que si deseas una en concreto no tendrás que depender del rng, sino que disparando al objeto de mejora este cambiará, pudiendo así conseguir el necesario mientras tengas la habilidad suficiente. Para que se reduzcan y vuelvan a ser de base debes recibir un golpe sin escudo. De primeras esto puede parecer bastante castigo de más, sobre todo en una boss fight. Pero hay que tener en cuenta que la condición de derrota se da una vez perdidos los tres créditos, los cuales se pierden una vez perdidas las vidas de la nave en cuestión, que estas a su vez se pierden al recibir un golpe sin escudo. El juego, aún siendo de cierta dificultad, es generoso con las oportunidades que brinda al jugador. Además, en mi experiencia personal me ha venido bien que el hit sin escudo quite las stats recogidas. La nave rápida con la mejora de velocidad me resulta muy complicada de controlar, ya que en general me gustan los controles con poca sensibilidad. Así que la estrategia que he llevado con esa nave es evitar coger velocidad y cuando sin querer ocurría forzar hit para que me la quite. Con esto se puede ver que cada nave tiene su propia estrategia y depende también de cómo es el jugador, no será la misma para el resto. Todo esto junto a un nostálgico arte, una atractiva banda sonora y un generoso precio hacen que este título valga mucho la pena. Muy buen trabajo, felicidades.

Muy buen shot em up de naves! Un bullet hell desafiante, fresco y con un pixel art muy bonito. Si te gustan los clásicos de micro ordenadores, consolas de 8 y 16 bits este juego te va a enamorar. Modo para 2 jugadores, una dinámica compleja que te tendrá horas y horas en frente la pantalla intentando abrirte paso a las oleadas de enemigos y jefes! Dale una oportunidad! No te vas arrepentir!