Galactic Wars EX

Galactic Wars EX is a game that has solid foundations, yet fails to realize its potential due to some of its design decisions. Therefore it ultimately ends up being frustrating. As I have not played this game enough to warrant a full fledged review, I will not go into details. I simply did not enjoy my brief time the game and therefore see no reason to continue playing. If you want detailed explanation of the game's features, I recommend looking at the other, well-written negative review on the store page. With that said, what you read below are my impressions of the time I spent with the game and stuff that I do believe are flaws that drag the experience down. - There is no options screen in the game. You cannot change the controls, change display settings or tweak the audio levels. - The keyboard layout is... very unintuitive if I may say. Player 1 needs to use WASD to move and G to shoot, while player 2 uses the directional keys to move and numpad 0 to shoot. While these bindings do separate each control scheme to a side of the keyboard, they are very uncomfortable to play with. With the lack of rebindable controls, this becomes a big issue. - The missile powerup is a massive…

Galactic Wars EX is a retro-inspired side-scrolling shoot-’em-up developed by VolcanoBytes and published by JanduSoft that proudly embraces the design philosophy of classic arcade space shooters. Built around pixel art visuals, chiptune-inspired audio, and straightforward but demanding gameplay, it delivers an experience that feels immediately familiar to fans of old-school shmups while incorporating enough modern refinements to remain accessible on contemporary platforms. Rather than reinventing the genre, Galactic Wars EX focuses on refining its core mechanics and celebrating the fast-paced intensity that defined arcade cabinets of the past. The gameplay centers on piloting one of three distinct ships through a series of horizontally scrolling stages filled with waves of alien enemies. Each ship offers slightly different attributes, encouraging players to experiment with handling and offensive capabilities. Some ships emphasize raw firepower, allowing players to overwhelm enemies with concentrated damage, while others offer better maneuverability for navigating dense bullet patterns. This variation adds a subtle layer of strategy, as ship selection can influence how a stage feel…

This game is brilliant, but too short! I love this game that I played!

Man, I really wanted to like this game, but it just isn’t clicking for me. The lack of auto-fire feels pretty rough for a shmup, especially when firing is also tied to limited ammo. On top of that, the power-up system feels overly simplistic and not very satisfying to engage with. I’m not trying to just dunk on the game for the sake of it, but a lot of these design choices feel strange when the genre has decades of great examples to learn from. It feels like some of the fundamentals that make shmups fun and rewarding got overlooked here.

Limiting the use of weapons in a game like this could encourage more thoughtful gameplay. Allowing the player to cycle through possible powerups by shooting them could be useful. Employing both powerups which block an infinite number of projectiles AND firepower that is thusly limited simultaneously is so mind-numbingly counter-productive and, for me, anti-fun that it seems malicious that anyone would have made it this way intentionally. The two meaningful mechanics of the game are BOTH obstacles to prevent you from successfully shooting the enemies which, to be totally clear, is the entire objective.

Quite creative in a very established genre