Do you like SubSpace? Do you like Star Control? Space Rangers? What about Espace Velocity? Do you long for days where you could just dash in with beams ablaze, launching micro missile swarms at civilian battlestars, jettison useless goons into the deep vacuum of space, **** around with small ships and try to become big, rich and unstoppable?
How about some Homeworld influences? And yes, the abbreviation is "SPAZ". Apparently some Brits have something to say about it.
The game, Space Pirates and Zombies, was published in 2011. It's a 2D arcadey space shooter. It pays a lot of homage to old games, sci-fi series and movies and is not all that serious. There's a homeworldey feeling, especially with the zombies; there are beams, surprisingly familiar-looking ships, all kinds of jazz. It feels like someone shuffled a mix of 1990s gaming, threw in some 2000s games and released it for a pretty low price. And the pirates are more like mercenaries, and zombies are... something a bit different.
The game's cheap and small, looks nice, has surprising amount of athmosphere and is, as is common with small projects, kinda a mixed bag. It can and will be frustrating. There can be hours of grinding (which is surprsingly fun, but I could do with less) and it's not very variable. It has both silly humour with pop references and kinda dark, morbid twist. It's superfun to fly around in your small ship and shoot at things. Pew pew! It's super-annoying to minmax your research builds and fight against the tier 30 enemies for the umpteenth time. It's awesome to look at the wonderful backgrounds and finally have that Colt wreaking havoc amongst enemy Scouts. It's frustrating that the diversity of the ships and tech isn't bigger - at least yet. It's a space-shooter in a very classical sense, but for those of you who like that sort of game, that's a pretty good thing.
I like the game but it really needs a bit more variety, a sense of achieving something in the early game and maybe expanded universe. But for a two-man team it's quite nice and fills my "PEW PEW" quota very well.
