Distant Space Review – a Simple, Short, and Boring Space Invaders Style Game

Distant Space is a simple shmup in the vein of Space Invaders or Galaxian with what looks like vector-based graphics. It is designed to imitate those classics, but it doesn’t do so in an impressive manner.

Like those two titles, you are a ship at the bottom of the screen and fire your bullets upward to defeat the enemies that come down in a specific pattern each level. Of the two titles it is trying to imitate, it seems to be more like Space Invaders than Namco’s title. No enemies try to crash into your ship, nor do any of them suck up your vessel. The only things that can hurt you are the enemies’ bullets and some slow-moving homing missiles that start to appear later in the game.

You can fire a single shot by holding down the left-mouse button. Occasionally you can pick up a power-up for limited usage of double and triple shot firepower. None of these are a spread shot. Nor do you have any homing missiles or bombs. Your attack power is extremely limited. You can’t even move up or down. You can only move from side to side. One thing that is neat is that with the mouse controls you can do some pretty good dodging of the few bullets that come your way. This is most noticeable when fighting the game’s three bosses.

The music is pretty good, but also repetitive and doesn’t take long before it loops.

The biggest problem is that there is little satisfaction from defeating enemies and the firing of weapons has little weight behind them. Consequently, the game may be fun for a little time, but it feels and looks really barren. Upon reflection, I had a little fun with this title, but I cannot recommend it. I got it for free, and I don’t think it is worth paying for. It is not exactly terrible, but I don’t recommend it. Only buy it if you want to support a small developer, something like Space Invaders for a short time, or like to earn easy achievements.

Summary: This kind of has a vector graphics look and some pretty good repeating music. Yet, I found it very boring in the end. Mouse control is distinctive, though.

Remember, we can have different opinions about the games we play. If you like something more (or less) than I do, both of our perspectives are valid.