Call Sign is Magic Liner

What a neat little SHMUP! It executes well on its gimmick of drawing circles for creating more powerful attacks, and generally has just the right level of difficulty. I did find the 10th level, which was a boss rush level, a bit too difficult for my personal taste, but otherwise I really enjoyed the 30 minutes I put into the 9 other levels. It's free, so if you're a SHMUP junky, just download it and try it!

"Call Sign is Magic Liner" is a very bad attempt to make a spin on the traditional shoot 'em up for mobile phones. In this mobile-app-in-exile, you draw your finger on your iPhone screen to move the ship around. This leaves a line which helps you to kill the enemies. Yeah, that's the only differentiator here apart from some of the worst graphics to insult PC gamers in a hot minute. While I couldn't find this on the mobile app stores, everything about it looks and feels like it's a mobile app designed for mobile phones... for PC gaming enthusiasts, it's not going to give you a cutting edge PC gaming experience. That alone is enough to disqualify this from any recommendation. We don't spend thousands building gaming rigs so that we can pretend they're iPhones and play iPhone games and mobile apps. The ugly pixelcrap here is dishonestly presented as a "deliberate artistic choice", but we all know it's because the developer wasn't capable of anything better. The result is an ugly looking game, especially when compared to thousands of professionally developed games here. Whether the developer lacked the talent for modern visuals or the money to hire an artist is irrelevant. This…

Awkward to play with controls with no option to change them. Inconsistencies when it comes to the main gimmick not always working when it clearly should and enemy hitboxes acting weird when moving.

Call Sign is Magic Liner takes the familiar foundations of a retro shoot ’em up and gives movement a much more important purpose than simply avoiding enemy attacks. Developed and published by Brushing Software, this free-to-play action game revolves around drawing lines with the player’s movement and forming circles that become powerful magical attacks. It is a relatively small and focused arcade experience, but its unusual central mechanic helps distinguish it from shooters that depend entirely on conventional firing, dodging, and memorizing projectile patterns. The defining feature is the ability to create magic circles through movement. As the player travels around the battlefield, a line follows the ship, and closing that path into a circle produces an opportunity to unleash a powerful laser. This changes the usual relationship between movement and combat. Instead of automatically heading toward the safest available opening, players have to consider whether they can use the available space to complete a circle without colliding with incoming threats. A successful maneuver therefore accomplishes two objectives at once: surviving the immediate danger and preparing a stronger off…

Simple but challenging.

A very cute retro styled shmup with a neat twist. Free to play, so give it a shot!