Space Shooter with Clever Increase in Challenge

Where Scavenger excels is in its difficulty system, and its level of polish. The controls are very smooth--everything is controlled with the mouse, and the levels introduce new features and problems gradually. Scavenger's difficulty system is particularly clever: rather than simply making enemies more numerous or powerful, each difficulty level ads some new feature to complicate your life. For example, at the second level, there's gravity, constantly dragging you down to the bottom of the screen, so you must be firing your jets periodically to prevent contact with lower walls (any wall contact damages your shields); at the next, you have a limited amount of fuel for each level, and have to husband it carefully. This considerably increases the game's replay value--playing it on a higher difficulty level presents new challenges, not just more stuff.

Amoeba Shmup

Singularis is a sort of shmup for amoebas. You play Proto, a protozoan with the unlikely ambition of becoming the most powerful being in the universe. Initially, you can do nothing more than move (which, in the default control scheme, you do by choosing direction with the mouse and pressing the Up arrow to move forward, or the Back arrow to move back). Later on, you gain additional abilities, including cilia to let you row yourself forward more quickly, and -- I did call it a shmup -- a gun. Or if you prefer, the ability to shoot destructive viruses at enemies.

Starscape is a great example how a small team that knows what its doing can pack a lot of gameplay into a small package--and Moonpod, a team of long-term industry vets turned indie, know precisely what they're doing.

At its heart, Starscape is a space "shmup" (shoot-em-up) with the kind of fast, intense shooting action you expect in a game of that style; but layered atop that is a game of resource management and tech development.

Swarm is a shmup--a 2D space combat game--but a bit more than that as well. Your main task is mining a resource called EZT--which the "swarm" aliens are also attempting to do. They do more than get in the way, of course--they shoot back.

It's a level-based game; after you collect enough EZT, a gate opens to the next level. Naturally, as the game progresses, the aliens become more numerous and aggressive.

In and among the space debris, you'll find many power-ups, including, after level 20, the "star clubber," an awesome thingie that swings around and whacks enemies nearby--sort of a space morningstar, if you will.