Shooty Space reminds me of those early 80s games that were featured in home computer magazines as 20 lines of BASIC-code that you could type in on an afternoon. The fun of programming super-simple freeware games is lacking here, but for 2,99€ RCMADIAX typed in the few lines of code so you don't have to, and made it work on Wii U, almost.

In Shooty Space you're greeted by a decent title screen: the game logo seems to be cut out on the sides and it has the control options layed out (steer left and right and press the A button to shoot). It prompts you to touch the screen to start a game. Isn't that a great design? Making a game with no touch controls, but then having to use the GamePad AND the touchscreen to start the game, because, you know the START or A button would have been way too handy.


Starting the game you see it's played like a 2D vertical shooter and endless small enemy drones swoop down from the top of the screen. Shoot them for 1 point, dodge them, or get hit, explode, and start over from zero almost instantly. Every now and then a medium sized ship draws closer. It can shoot a pink dot, takes a few more hits and gives you more points. Also, if you reach certain scores a bigger ship approaches, taking the most hits, firing lasers and adding 100 points when destroyed. That's it, a total of 3 enemy types that aren't even animated. There's not much to look at either: a few pixel stars scrolling by beneath a redundant grid, and a window taking up the bottom left of the screen reading "EXIT GAME: Y". So, if you accidentally hit the Y button it basically resets the game, starting with RCMADIAX's logo before entering the title screen. But what for? There is nothing that can be done or changed in the title screen, and there are enough enemies to crash into if you want to restart for whatever reason. It's way faster than going back to the title screen. It's a useless function mindlessly tied to one of the main face buttons and it's clogging up the corner of the screen hauntingly.

All you do is shooting and dodging. There is no progression, no levels, no difficulty changing, no bonuses, nothing to unlock, but infinite looping. One life, one level, endless mashing on the A button while moving left and right. Just your highscore will be saved and is always displayed at the top of the screen.


The worst part of this extremely simple and repetitive game is that it doesn't even work as intended. Every time you shoot and every time one of the two bigger ships shoot, the bullets don't come out from the center. They come out from the far right wing! How is it even possible that a bug like this is not noticed by the developer within the first few seconds testing the game? At least the music is ok. It's just one track for the whole game but it's not a nervewrecking 10 second loop like what can be found in some of RCMADIAX's earlier games.

Shooty Space is repetitive, careless, supertrashy amateur shovelware. For 2,99 you can find actual gems on the Wii U eShop. Leave this one at the bottom of the barrel.


Written by SKTTR, 16th September 2016.