The horde is relentless. Every time I become naively confident in the timing of my laser sweeps and think I finally have the upper hand on my enemies, the next wave comes in ten times more powerful just to put me in my place. I crush them, they come back stronger and outnumber me, and our little dance begins again.
In a Playdate game created by Shaun Inman, the creator of Pulp, where it's just you and your overheat-prone space laser fighting the world. From the game's description:
The lights in the sky are going out. A massive shell around an ailing star is the last bastion of a civilization that has witnessed a cosmic extinction event. But at the edge of the gloom lurks a horde driven mad by darkness, determined to snuff out the last of the light.
Your job is to defend the Sphere from incoming attackers, using the crank to control the direction of the laser beam and “A” to fire. You can hold “A” for a continuous burst of the laser, but this is a time-limited action – after a few seconds, your laser will overheat and become unusable until it cools down, leaving you completely vulnerable. To avoid this, you can fire in short bursts to conserve energy. But when tiny, high-speed enemies come at you in packs, good luck trying to kill each one individually. When all else fails, you can deploy a bomb to take out a large number of enemies at once.
There are ways to upgrade the Sphere that will give you a better chance of keeping the swarm at bay. After destroying the ships, you can harvest their materials and use the currency from this at the end of each level to buy upgrades and make repairs. One add-on will reduce the laser's cooldown time, while another will strengthen your shield.
Thanks to the overheat/cooldown element, every decision seems high risk and Laser sphere As a result, it's an extremely engaging action game (Mike Freuden's music is pretty solid, too). There are enemies of different sizes, each type moves at a different speed, and you really have to be on your toes to make sure you're making the best use of your laser for whatever threat is most pressing at the time. Otherwise, you'll end up without a weapon when a couple dozen attackers are right on top of you. You can get Laser sphere in the Playdate catalog for $6.
