About
Become the captain of the stars in this 3D arcade style space shooter. Dodge asteroids, watch out for proximity mines, and battle a never ending stream of enemy ships bent on your destruction. espressoSoft is proud to present StarSmasher as a soon to be addition to your iPhone/iPod Touch app collection.
Player Ship
Asteroid
Enemy Fighter
Minelayer
Proximity Mine
Controls
StarSmasher is a 3D on-rails space shooter. Tilting the iPhone away or towards you moves your ship towards the top and bottom of the screen. Tilting side to side moves the ship left and right. Tapping the screen fires lasers (I am currently pondering whether to add a slower continuous fire mode when a tap is held).
Enemies
Dodge asteroids as you increase your score and try to stay alive in an active asteroid belt. The minelayer is a heavily armored ship that leaves behind proximity mines. Don’t get too close to a proximity mine left by the minelayer or you’ll be sorry. Also dodge enemy fighters as they leave the space station beyond the asteroid belt with one order: to kill.
Upgrades
As you blast through asteroids watch out for the two upgrades available. The first, depicting an icon of your ship will restore your shields by 25%. The second, depicting the cockpit and forward laser cannons will upgrade your lasers to quadruple damage for a limited amount of time.
Screenshot:
See video here.
Where to Get It:
StarSmasher is available for $2.99 on the iTunes App store here.
Reviews
TouchArcade calls the game, “…a very fun and well executed single level shooter…”
iGames at Lockergnome says, “…if you are looking for a classic on-rails spaceship shoot ‘em up you cannot go wrong with this $2.99 game.”
OS X Reality has a praising review here.
17 Comments so far
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Looks good. 2 Questions:
Is the game on ‘rails’ like StarFox?
Have you decided on a price for it?
Looks cool! I was wondering when someone would make something like this. Apple demoed a program like this before. Can you tell us anything else about this game? How many levels are there? Is it just one endless level? Will there be bosses? How about upgrades? I’m interested to see what you come up with.
Can you put a continus fire button (semi automatic fire?) in a corner (ideally lower right) to keep from tapping so much?
Also, I love the ability to see the ship from a couple diffrent angles. As shown, maybe a closer in view, or even cockpit (3rd person shooter style) views. I know a lot of racing games give you this option which greatly changes the feel and comfort in gameplay.
Looks great, I can’t wait to play this one.
@Chris
Yes, it is on ‘rails’ like StarFox. I love the old StarFox games and I thought that the accelerometer would lend itself to a similar control system… It does. Also, I’ve updated the above post with the price which is $2.99. Because it is a single level and is more designed as a asteroid-blasting time waster than a full fledged story-lined game I thought this was an appropriate balance between similar games going for 0.99 or 1.99 with lesser or 2D graphics and the more complete games that seem to be falling in the 7.99-9.99 range.
@Bubble
I hope you will like it. I made this game because it is the game I wanted on my iPhone. Making it available to others is just a perk =D. It is (currently) one endless level and I hadn’t planned on adding any bosses (the minelayer can be seen as a sort of persistent mini boss, it is harder to kill and pesky with those mines). If I do add bosses, however, it will be made available via an update.
@Aaron
There isn’t a continuous fire button yet, but since you mentioned it I decided that the best option might be to just add continuous fire as long as you hold down the tap anywhere on the screen. It won’t be as fast as you can fire with your hands but it won’t be too slow to be unusable. How does that sound?
As to the cockpit issue, I’ll have to think about that. Screen real estate is a premium for an iPhone game and I tried to keep the HUD elements to a minimum so that they wouldn’t get in the way of gameplay. It may be a possible future update, however.
UPDATE: I’ve added continuous firing. If you just hold down the tap your ship will fire at a rate of 4 times per second. I’ve also adjusted the controls a bit and sped up the gameplay to make it a touch more difficult. I can’t seem to apply this update until the contract is completed by Apple, however, so it is likely that the initial release will not contain the new code and an update will be pushed a few days afterwards when Apple approves it (it took about 4 days for the initial release to be approved.)
I can’t wait for this game! The price seems perfect for the kind of game it is. My recommendation for the future would be if you had on the main menu a place where you could customize your game in the following ways:
-viewpoint (first person, third person, chase, etc.)
-ship (different ones could have different rates of fire or maneuverability)
-maybe level selection could even be added so there would be some variety
-what about a way to customize the rate asteroids and enemies appeared (free play?)
Just spouting out ideas, but I think the game could be made much more thorough and if you added some of the stuff I recommended you could even raise the price to 4.99 or 7.99, not to mention the fact that sales would be boosted because of the features. They’re just suggestions, but please consider them. Thanks!
Send me an email when it’s up on the appstore. SOLD. I love the shooters. Best of luck with your app. Bill.
Awesome! Best of luck to you with your game! May you score many 2.99’s…
Got a questions about the controls. Are they strictly setup for tilt up moves you up and tilt down moves you down or can you reverse these so they are like plane controls (tilt up/away to go down, tilt down/towards to go up??
@MicroByte
At the moment they are not invertible. The idea is that you have the ship sort of balanced on the surface of the iPhone and you are moving it as you would a marble on the surface, if that makes any sense.
Wow, this game looks really cool, can’t wait to buy it!
If this is successful enough, please consider making a larger version with many levels.
I’ve just downloaded this and am waiting for it to install - glad to see it available, finally! I’ve been waiting ever since the Touch Arcade preview …
I wonder though, about adding a calibration setting. You know what would be VERY cool - what if we could do a ‘quick calibration’ in-game by holding two corners simultaneously (for example) without even having to go through the menu. Would that be possible?
Invertible controls would be awesome, the way it controls now just feels completely backwards to me.
If this game were expanded with storyline, bosses, different worlds, and customizable ships (like different parts and upgrades to vamp up your ship’s firepower or shields) I would totally buy this at $10.
But it’s also great as it is.
I think this game is really cool, and a great deal for 2.99! But i think it could use more features such as maybe a change of planes, or maybe more upgrades for the laser, or a shield, i think that if you add upgrades like these, with maybe bosses, and make it more like a story game insted of a continious shooter(arcade-like game) you could easily sell it for about 4.99 or 5.99, I think that if you keep it not-so-high preiced it will attract a lot more attention, and a better deal! But otherwise its a GREAT game, keep it up! P.S i love the update of inverted controls!!
hey still loving the game, but im sorry to say that i was expecting more out of the update ToT but its still very fun, keep it up! maybe a boss would be nice! or different ships to choose from! But still amazing! im looking forward to the capability from this game! GREAT!
Great game, I just downloaded it ^o^
Great improvements so far - inverted control, powerups.
I havent managed to destroy a single enemy ship
The game physics and graphics are spot on though
This game has a lot of potential and a few more improvements could make this a top seller:
- fewer asteroids so I can have a chance to shoot something else and get the bonus upgrades!
- enemy ships continuosly fly in front of you until you kill them and dont disappear after a couple of seconds behind you somewhere
- levels, bosses, weapon upgrades, ship upgrades etc.
maybe at the end of each level you could buy upgrades with a certain amount of points (this would also be interesting for a highscore table as you choose to spend your points or not- so if you dont buy any you could have a higher score)
- different camera angles, a closer up one and 1st person
most of these/all of these! have been mentioned i know, but just reiterating valid comments
I love the game so far so im in no hurry for the improvements, but if you could make a few mentioned- this would be worth far more than 2.99!!!!!!!!!!