The articlegameplay, story, development, reception
Gameplay
Using the PlayStation Vita's dual analog sticks, players control a starship orbiting a generic planet. The planet's orbit acts as the playfield, filled with asteroids, lasers, and enemies for the player to destroy or avoid. In the main arcade mode, there are 5 planets, consisting of 5 phases each. At the end of each planet, the player encounters a boss, as in a traditional platform or adventure game.
The ship is equipped with a wide variety of weapons, smart bombs, a temporary shield, and a speed booster system to defend or attack. The ship has two projectile weapons of opposite polarities (Ice and Fire) that can be switched between on-the-fly. While one is effective against a certain type of enemy, it can be almost useless against another so players must quickly adapt to situations, constantly choosing which weapon to use against what. Each weapon can be powered up over the course of the game by collecting tokens as in "space invaders" (dropped onto orbit from destroyed enemy craft/asteroids).
Development
Housemarque encountered two problems during the development which caused lowered FPS. The problems were poor rendering performance on the GPU and poor simulation speeds on the CPU.
To solve these issues Housemarque changed to lighter and more efficient shaders. They optimized the GPU performance through small tweaks like they rendered the Black Hole effect on the same shader as the "game grid" (planet orbit/playfield).
Reception
The game was reviewed on Metacritic.
Carolyn Petit of GameSpot said the game is a "fitting launch game for the Vita's download store" due to its abundant use of color and flash that emphasizes the display capabilities of the PlayStation Vita, but Petit added that the gameplay was unoriginal and similar to other dual-stick shooters in the genre.
