When you first look at Galacide on paper, you’d be forgiven for wondering how in the hell the game would even be playable. PunyHuman studios have combined a sidescrolling space shooter and match 4 puzzle game into one package. And the suprising thing is…it works. Well.  I’ve put my share of time into Galacide, and the one constant that I always heard while streaming it in preperation for this review was some variation on “Oh my god, this game looks insane” “Wow, that game is gorgeous.” and “how the hell do you even know whats going on?”

Gorgeous certainly sums up Galacide. While a shmup/puzzler hybrid might not seem like the most likely place to find Epic’s new Unreal Engine 4, Galacide puts it to good use. The backdrops, the enemies, the player ship and the massive walls of blocks impedeing your progress are detailed, glossy and move with silky smooth animations. Explosions and shots jump out of the chaos of the ongoing dance of death that is Galacide with a pronounced visual punch. Vibrant colors are the name of the game in a puzzler, and PunyHuman has nailed that with the vibrant pallete that instantly allows you to pick out the colors of the oncoming “bit” wall of death as it marches inexorably towards you.

And special mention need to go to the sound design. Once again, explosions and shots are punchy and sound great. But the soundtrack to this game is just fantastic. Epic, driving and pitch perfect, it never failed to get me pumped. Put simply, the score of Galacide makes you want to play the game. Hell, it makes you want to dive headlong into insane mazes of bits as you seek to puzzle and shoot your way to safety.

The most unique thing about Galacide is the core gameplay mechanic. Or rather, the melding of those mechanics. I’ve been a fan of shmups since the good old days of R-Type and Gradius, all the way up to modern bullet hell games like Ikaruga. Galacide starts you out with a tutorial that teaches you the basics of it’s world. Shoot enemies. Grab bits of floating scrap and use them to clear bits that are blocking your way. The bits take the form of hexagonal structures that wall off your progress. They come in four different colors, and it’s up to you to fire the matching bits of colored scrap back until you create a match of four or more, thereby obliterating the offending bits. You also have the ability to hold a bit of scrap and, by touching a bit, you can force it to change colors. This is handy if say, you have three same colored bits capped by a different color. Simply force the different block to change and you clear all four.

The puzzling aspect of the game seems simple and straightforward. Until you remember that while you are contemplating the best way to clear a path through the multicolored maze of bits in front of you, you are also fighting for your life in traditional SHMUP style against incoming waves of enemies. Couple this with the fact that your ship can’t pick up scrap while shooting, nor can it shoot while holding a piece of scrap, and things become very frantic, very very quickly. PunyHuman has ratcheted up the pressure even more in the form of the experience system in the game. As you destroy enemies, and (more importantly) as you clear bits, you build up experience which upgrades your weapons. You max out at level 3, but the twist is that your xp is constantly depleting. If you want to keep that big ass beam laser of yours, you better get to clearing bits quickly.

 
Powerups will also drop occasionally, from health, to a weapons overcharge to and xp booster. They each have an associated colored bit that they can drop from, making progression not simply a matter of shooting and puzzling randomly, but effectively and efficiently managing what blocks you are clearing so that you have a chance of getting a useful powerup.

If all of this didn’t seem hectic enough, Galacide then throws in different enemy types and even boss battles. Some enemies are simple, such as destroyers with more firepower. And some bosses are simply scaled of versions of smaller enemies- albeit with much more firepower and a few truly nasty bullet hell like patterns to dodge. But then there are the other bosses, such as the giant space snake that you have to stuff full of bits and explosive barrels until pops and becomes vulnerable to damage.

As if all that weren’t enough, PunyHuman then had the sheer balls to throw in 4 different types of ships. The Mining ship can suck bits of scrap towards it, allowing you to collect them even in tight quarters. The Freighter can store a piece of scrap behind it for future use, and that scrap will actually become a mini turret firing at enemies on it’s own. The Phase ship can use a rechargable power to..phase through bits that are in it’s way, becomining invincible in the process. Each ship also has it’s own unique weapon and upgrades for that weapon, giving you a ship for your preferred playstyle as well as changing the feel of the game significantly depending on which one you are flying. And then there’s the fourth ship, which I haven’t unlocked yet because I just can’t seem to take down the required enemy. I’d go into more detail, but spoilers.

Theres a story to accompany the shooting and puzzling action as you and your helpful cast of characters seek to stop the bits from advancing and infesting the universe. I like that the story is included, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. then again, I didn’t pay much attention to the story of R-Type either. The story isn’t bad by any means, its just that, as with many shmups, story is secondary to me when compared to tight gameplay. Fortunately, the gameplay in Galacide is rock solid. Ships handily snappily, yet differently. The Phase ship is quick and agile. The freighter is a bit slower, and it’s larger size takes some getting used to. It’s a nice balance. Shooting is quick and instantly familiar if you’ve played a shmup before. And the bits of scrap that you fire out have a convenient targeting indicator that will show you exactly where they will land, even if you are firing from across the full width of the screen.

Throw in an endless mode, a fiendishly difficult puzzle mode and multiple difficulty levels, and you have a great shmup. The icing on the cake, for me, is PunyHu7man’s incredibly smart decision to add local co-op. While I would have preferred online multiplayer, I’m certainly not going to argue against being able to sit down with a friend on the couch with the game in big picture mode and thrash some nasty space baddies while plowing through walls of colored bits.

Galacide is a great game. A fusion of two unlikely genres, handled with confidence and aplomb by PunyHuman, its gorgeous, handles like a purebred shmup and throws in a wicked twist with it’s hectic and intense puzzling. A great soundtrack, variety of modes and local co-op only serve to make it even better. If you want a fresh take on the shooter genre, go pick up Galacide on Steam. I’m giving it an 8 out of 10.