Last month UK indie developer Boss Baddie released its latest title out into the universe. After the atmospheric claustrophobia of Wake and the platforming of Lunnye Devitsy, the indie duo turns their talents on he space shooter genre with the challenging and exciting new game Big Sky.

Utilizing many aspects of the genre that have been seen before, Boss Baddie adds one big convention that is something of a game changer for their title. Your ship, equipped with weapons that can shoot in all directions can also change modes into a drill so that you can burrow your way through planets, shields and asteroids along the way. This flip of forms take away your ability to shoot, but heightens your ability to not splat into the sides of giant rock formations. The levels are dynamically generated and use a combination of eleven different enemies and two different bosses to keep things interesting and make each experience unique.

GAMEPLAY

Big Sky is a sidescrolling space shooter that utilizes just three controls. Using a gamepad, the left stick controlled the ship’s position, the right stick controlled the weapons, and the action button controlled the states between shooting and drilling. The title thrives on simplicity and by narrowing down the available functions, makes great use of highscores, multipliers and survival.

As you blast your way through each level, you’ll find yourself drilling through asteroids to survive, gaining multipliers as the number of ships that have died at your hand increases. An errant bullet may take you down, but the game is so smooth and simple that you’ll have no problem clicking start again and taking on the adventure one more time.

With just eleven enemy types and two big bosses, you’re going to see a lot of repeats but at the same time variation in their execution. One of the boss’ weak spot changes from appearance to appearance and another boss randomly decides what to shoot at you. And you’ll encounter multiple versions of the bosses all in a single run. On one of my better runs that cracked 100,000 points I saw one boss appear three different times.

As you tally up higher scores, you can then spend those points on upgrading twelve different traits that will help your ship in future runs. Each trait has a huge number of slots to fill, so in order to max out your ship you’re going to have to earn a lot of points. While I was definitely stronger at the end of all my play sessions, I must say the small increments of upgrades aren’t directly noticeable from game to game. It often felt as though absolutely nothing had changed between runs, though in hindsight it definitely felt as though about halfway through my upgrades I was more powerful than when I had first loaded up the game.

I ran through the game 30 or 40 times to learn its intricacies, tricks and to be honest, try and nab myself a slot on the scoreboard. After all was said and done, I’d say that my biggest complaint is the fact that as my ship exploded there were many many times where I could not pinpoint exactly how I had died. The screen gets so busy at times that it’s nearly impossible to see which projectile, bullet or enemy collided with me.

STYLE

The pulsing explosions rattling through the universe look great and hold that almost digital water color look that Boss Baddie’s earlier game Wake exemplified as well. And switching up environments from the blackness of space to the inside of different planets look spectacular from start to finish.

And the addition of nearby stars really shakes up the playing field. You’ll be blinded by the glowing orbs that take up more size than the playing field itself and fire desperately hoping that there doesn’t happen to be an asteroid waiting for you in front of that glowing giant. The enemies all hold a similar design, the starkest contrasts lying in their coloring.

SOUND

The pulsing techno soundtrack is a nice compliment to the on-screen action and overall the explosions and music combined nicely to provide an excellent experience through and through.

Though after running through the game dozens of times, mainly in succession, I must say that the single track grew slightly repetitive. Though because each run can last as short or long as your particular skills allow, I can understand the necessity of having a universal song throughout.

EVERYTHING ELSE

I’ve openly admitted in the past that I’m not the best candidate to survive long in the Shmup world. From laughable scores in You Will Die to not wanting to recall early experiences with Gradius, Big Sky surprisingly made me feel as though I was making progress with my shooting skills. By upgrading traits and trying over and over again, you definitely gain an understanding of the game world and start to gain a foothold in this new bullet-drill-hell universe.

The oddest thing that happened, on a single non-definitive run was the fact that the procedurally generated level decided to generate…well…nothing. My ship flew safely through space for around five minutes before I finally decided it was time to quit the run because nothing was happening. The game didn’t crash or freeze, it just stopped producing enemies for me to fight. While it was frustrating as I had accrued a decent score, I found this error to not be indicative of the full product.

The game is solid from start to your particular finish (it’s survival, therefore different for everyone). And for the miniscule price Boss Baddie is requesting for the game, I can’t help but recommend it to all Shmup fans or anyone interested in the genre.

You can buy Big Sky from GamersGate for £4.99 and visit Boss Baddie on their official website. Here’s the trailer for the game if you’d like to see further illustration of my points: