Dogfighting Asteroids-Style in Galak-Z - Preview
by Karl Koebke , posted on 19 June 2014 / 3,115 Views
When Galak-Z was shown at Sony's press conference in 2013 I was instantly drawn to it. I've always enjoyed the Asteroids take on space ship movement where you build up momentum and then have to point your ship in the direction you wish to travel. Seeing a new game with that control scheme and some apparently difficult dogfights was enough to catch my eye. After getting to play Galak-Z at this year's E3, I can say that my hopes were warranted.
Galak-Z is one of those newfangled procedurally generated games everyone is talking about these days. The mission screen gave me three possible choices, each meant to represent a different difficulty level. After failing a few times at the hardest difficulty level I settled on the medium one. Before going into the mission you have to choose your weapons, and there's a surprising amount of variety to be had. Bullet type, firing rate, and spread of the shot can all be changed and mixed up to make for an impressive number of combinations. I personally chose a laser shot with a shotgun spread and burst fire with a single deadly shot about every 2 seconds.
Another thing that interests me about Galak-Z is the control scheme. You can point the ship in any direction and can then use forward, reverse, and even sideways thrusters for strafing (if you can master their use). Controlling the ship in two dimensions is difficult enough but if you are in a spot of trouble the juke move can dodge an attack and make you invincible for a short time by moving in and out of the third dimension.
What I liked about playing Galak-Z is that it felt like instead of a bullet hell game, in which bullets are flying around and you have to find a safe path through them, the battles were more like dogfights. Every bullet that comes at you is specifically aimed to kill you and if you aren't careful even the most basic ship can send you packing. This made exploring each level extremely tense.
I spoke to CEO of 17 Bit, Jake Kazdal, after my demo and he told me that while the story was not something he wanted to be the focus of the game he was currently working on a backstory that will be presented through chatter between the pilot and others. He also told me that Galak-Z was planned for release by the end of the year. So, if you're looking for a new and challenging space-themed game then keep Galak-Z in mind. I know I certainly will.
