Horizon Shift

Developer: Flump Studios
Steam Release: May 2015
Usual Price: £3.99
Hours Played: 3
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Rating: 2/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
The aptly entitled Horizon Shift is quite literally a game of two halves. Your ship initially sits atop of a horizontal line stretching across the middle of your screen. You fire your missiles upward at your foes in true space-invader type fashion but flip that ship 180 degrees and you place your ship on the other side of the line towards your foes facing downwards. Enemy ships often appear symmetrically, in a mirror image, so flipping back and forth whilst gunning them down is the order of the day. Missiles flow fluidly out of your ship in a smooth stream and is doubly satisfying when they collide with enemies clumped together. It may sound simple but there are numerous twists that keep the game invigorating. For one, you have a jump button to leap over threats that travel along the line and an all-important smart-bomb to get you out of a tight spot.    

BALANCE & PACE
For starters the game throws boss levels at you at fairly regular intervals involving mother-ships of various kinds with varying degrees of bullet-hell trickery. Secondly, there are mini-game levels where the game breaks out into a Break-Out game. Now I can't say I'm particularly keen on genre-shifting dynamics within the same game and naturally this inclusion seems out-of-place. Not only are you called upon to use a different skill-set than what you expected to use but the ball decides to bounce at illogical and bizarre angles as it strikes walls and blocks. Fortunately, the game redeems itself in other areas; most notably when the horizontal line itself starts to rise and fall shifting the size of the two areas significantly sometimes in your favour and sometimes not. 
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
Horizon Shift has not been produced using a huge budget. The enemies are all rendered using simple geometric shapes reminiscent of the style used in the original Geometry Wars game. Think a thin simple skeletal frame lit up in a wiry neon lit glow. The background, likewise, is plain black with your own rapid-fire type missiles gushing out in a smooth and steady stream. The game is strongly helped by its accessible pounding soundtrack which definitely gets things rocking and immerses the player into the gameflow. The menus are intuitive and user-friendly where hitting Start takes you to a 3-part screen where you decide on your parameters including: playing one of eight modes; which stage to start at; which speed; which skin to use and which tune to play in the background.       

PROGRESS SYSTEM
There are two ways to progress in Horizon Shift. The conventional way would be in aiming to get your highest score in one of eight modes by starting at Stage 1. Be aware though, that only four modes are unlocked on firing up the game for the first time. The game gets the high-score system spot on: simply click on Scores from the main screen to access eight modes indexed like files in a cabinet and view each file/screen in the form of your Top 10 scores - perfect. The other way to progress is to start your game from a pre-selected wave or stage (obviously giving yourself a tougher challenge) and see if you can get to and unlock later waves. It's a simple system like this that best suits 2D shooters of this type.



CONCLUSION  
Apart from the slightly out-of-place (and let's face it - sub-par) Break-Out mini-game, Horizon Shift is an excellent shooter to plump for in breaking out of the ordinary for a while. It has so much more than its basic premise of firing above and below you in space-invaders style. Not only do you have a single jump as well as a double jump option (to evade aliens who have landed on your line) but you also have a chain system where you accumulate points - and then bank them - by hitting your smart bomb. Your chain score, incidentally, is displayed at the top-centre of the screen. With all its other fine features like eight modes, pumping soundtrack (which you can hand-pick before-hand) and  the choice to use five other skins etc - it adds up to a decent game that all 2D shooter enthusiasts should try.