Solar Shifter EX (PC)

Hungarian studio Elder Games, made up of Ede Tarsoly and a small team of developers, is mostly known for last year’s sci-fi RTS game Meridian: New World. Their latest game is a shoot-’em-up title by the name of Solar Shifter EX, created in partnership with German publisher Headup Games. It’s been available on PC since last month, and expected to arrive on consoles in the first quarter of 2016. According to Headup, Solar Shifter EX features not only an “epic storyline evolving over numerous worlds” and “massive enemy fleets and gorgeous landscapes”, but also “fierce combat situations in space over beautiful and distant planet surfaces” with “masses of enemies coming at you from all sides in [a] true bullet hell”. Keep reading to find out of Solar Shifter EX can deliver on its promises.

Shoot, shoot, shoot

The storyline of Solar Shifter EX is presented in the form of brief text boxes between missions, and it comes off as anything but epic. Basically, the solar system is about to be destroyed, and you have to try to get out alive. But the story doesn’t really matter anyway, as the focus of the game is clearly on endless classic shoot-’em-up action, leaving very little room for plot depth. While your more or less anonymous companions do often provide you with basic information about the mission objectives, the gameplay is pretty much always the same, so you can more or less ignore what passes for dialogue here. Essentially, you’ve got to get your ship, the “Phase Shifter”, from point A to point B in each level, viewed from a bird’s-eye perspective. Of course, you’d better expect some turbulence on a flight like this.

During your flights over a diverse range of planet surfaces, your ship will be attacked by hostile flying objects of all shapes and sizes, who fire lasers and rockets at you from all sides in unrelenting fury. When it comes to defending yourself, you’re pretty much limited to two options. First, you can keep keep your finger glued to the mouse button and hope that you can blow your enemies out of the sky before they manage to get a lucky shot in. You can also try to find a niche where you won’t get hit, as enemies usually fly in specific formations, firing their missiles in a particular pattern. It’s extremely important to be able to react quickly to a given situation, as just a few hits are enough to turn your ship into a blazing fireball, and you’ll have to restart from the most recent checkpoint. Checkpoints are pretty fairly distributed, however, so it shouldn’t take too long to complete a mission.

Each time you shoot down an enemy, they’ll drop credits and shield energy, which you can pick up in-flight. While the latter is used to charge your shields, naturally, you can use the credits you collect to purchase new equipment in the main hangar, such as secondary weapons.

Learning how to teleport

As the title suggests, the main feature in Solar Shifter EX is the ability to “shift”. This involves using a special jump drive to instantly teleport to one of four possible locations in order to get out of dicey situations. This is especially useful in cases like when an enemy ship is firing a deadly laser beam that stretches across half the screen driving your ship closer and closer into a tight spot. While shifting sounds cool in theory, in practice it'll probably tax your patience. So, if you want to shift to another location, first you have to make sure your spacecraft is at rest, then use the WASD keys to pick which direction you want to teleport in. But this can be really difficult to pull off correctly, as you’re always in motion as you try to avoid enemy fire from all sides. You can easily end up shifting in the wrong direction, which can cost you your life.

Nothing to see here, except action

The graphics in Solar Shifter EX are pretty fluid and offer a wide range of different settings and enemy ships, which sometimes cover the whole screen, exploding in glorious fireballs when you shoot them. But if you look more closely at the details, you’ll notice that the planet surfaces are often pretty sparse, and the cities you fly over look like the developers just haphazardly placed a couple of skyscrapers all over the place. The overall design seems to be lacking in creativity and imagination. Later in the game, they change things up a bit by moving the camera from the standard bird’s-eye perspective to more of a third-person one. But visual tricks like this don’t really do anything to change the basically monotonous design principle.

They do a better job with the soundtrack, which is made up of pounding beats and other electronic sounds. This highly artificial-sounding musical backdrop is an excellent accompaniment to the fast-based gameplay and futuristic setting.