I am a busy man, which is why I could have done well without another sinkhole of a twin stick delicacy of a shooter to sink hours of my precious time into, but here we are again. Galactic Glitch in its brand spanking current iteration has been on my mind constantly: a great looking Day-Glo sci-fi treat that has an addictive and satisfying set of tricks up its sleeve, primarily the way it allows your spacecraft to grab and manipulate objects and use them as projectiles.
Gameplay kicks off with a cool tutorial that guides you through the various mechanics that make Galactic Glitch tick. The visuals are arresting; the music thumping. Straight away, fans of stuff like Geometry Wars will be comfortably in their gaming wheelhouse. But this one has, like I say, a few gimmicks that set it apart nicely. A top-down affair, Galactic Glitch takes place inside interconnected gameplay areas that resemble giant all-encapsulating, undulating bubbles that can be stretched and manipulated when you fly towards them, throw stuff at them or burst through them into the next section.
Once you are out of the well-implemented tutorial that shows you the bread and butter of how things work, this is a roguelike, with your craft initially underpowered, slightly vulnerable, but with the promise of better things to come as you gradually get to upgrade your abilities by defeating enemies or completing tasks that drop stats upgrades and allow improvements on your loadout.
Although you get “conventional” weapons such as lasers and rail gun-style ordnance, the best thing about Galactic Glitch is the was you can use your grab ability and throw objects and enemies around the playfield. The size of the objects you are able to grab is dependent on the level your craft is at, but even right at the start when you can only sling small asteroids and the punier enemies around, the way it is handled and the physics are immensely satisfying, particularly when you factor in the way you can bounce stuff off the bubbly walls and pull off delightful trick shots to take down other enemies.
You can approach Galactic Glitch however you want, because there are different tactical avenues to go down depending on your own play style. You can be methodical, swerving around the battlefield, dodging attacks and opportunistically using the grab and throw combo to inflict maximum damage at minimal cost. You can also decide to go in all guns blazing using the third main weapon discharge facility mapped to the left trigger that effectively doubles your firepower and rewards sustained attacking fervour.
Regardless of your approach, the core of the game involves crawling between bubble encased zones, progress rewarded by blasting away all the enemies or debris in each. Occasionally you will encounter more challenging events and bosses, which are naturally more difficult especially early doors, but grant much more lucrative in-game currency orbs that you can use to pimp your intergalactic ride. Along the way you even get to unlock new ships to experiment with, each with their own unique foibles and abilities.
The further into the game you go, you experience different biomes and diverse enemies and hazards, and things do get extremely hectic and heat up to a frantic pace which makes the cool dash ability crucial to your survival, both as an evasive manoeuvre to save your bacon but also a means of positioning yourself in more effective strategic positions to attack, grab or manipulate. This is all the more pertinent when you consider that hitting foes from behind – here dubbed rather nastily as The Backstab – adds a punishing damage multiplier.
With so much variety, a great array of potential tactical roads to go down, and taut controls, Galactic Glitch is yet another fantastic and innovative addition to the twin-stick genre, one that it is fair to say has had a fair few belters so far this year.