Spotlight on.........Phoenicas

I just had a chance to fully evaluate Phoenicas by Aristides Mytaras, and must say I'm pretty impressed. Aside from a great game, you really get the feeling that this was designed by a true shmup fan, and you don't see that too often these days.

The game is, at it's heart, a vertical Defender clone. You need to protect five humans at the bottom of the screen from invaders trying to snatch them away. Along with your usual weapon, you can obtain three different options that do some very creative things: one of which amplifies your firepower while redirecting the shot towards the nearest enemy. The human-hungry invaders resemble bats, whose wings can be shot off leaving the main center piece. In order to help you in your mission, the craft is equipped with a shield that both deflects shots and helps catch humans that have been carted off then rescued.

The meat of the game lies in the scoring system, which includes ONLINE RANKING (my favorite embellishment!). There are many ways to boost your score, from no miss firing, to destroying only one kind of enemy, to fast kills. This means that blind shooting, which works with many other shmups, won't help you here. Strategy and precision will earn you top ranking on the tables, only after practice. For the advanced (read: crazy) players, there's even an option to change controls so you can rotate the ship to fire on angles - and don't worry, you have an autocenter button too.....

And oh, have I mentioned the music? Aristides is foremost a composer (check out his music samples on his main page) and the talent really shows. All this can be explained in more detail on the Phoenicas home page, which I highly recommend you visit and grab the demo......

Link: http://www.phoenicas.com/