Get Hyper!
Getting the controls right for some mobile games is difficult. Have you played the iPhone version of Street Fighter IV? It’s not easy thanks to using a touch control stick and set of buttons meaning accuracy is challenging to say the least. Infinity Blade had good ideas by using swipes and taps to simulate the use of your sword and shield, and many shoot ’em up games use touch controls for simply moving your ship. Hyper Beam uses something of the latter but in an interesting way.
Hyper Beam is a twin stick “shooter” (more on that shortly) in which you control two individual circular ships at the same time. This sounds rather challenging until you realise how elegant the control scheme really is. Your left thumb controls the left ship and your right thumb controls – you guessed it! – the right ship. It really is a very simple idea that works rather well for the most part. Using this method, you try to avoid incoming enemy ships and fire whilst attempting to destroy them yourself. Not by shooting though (hence shooter being in inverted commas), but rather by manoeuvring your ships so that enemies pass between them and through the energy beam that connects them. It’s really rather unique and I couldn’t really see this working with anything other than touch controls.
Should one of your ships suffer damage, your energy beam will deactivate for a short time and another strike will result in a Game Over. Survive for a few seconds unscathed will reactivate it. On the other hand, should you manage to defeat enough enemies without being damaged yourself, you can unleash your Hyper Beam and obliterate anyone that dares cross your path. You are still vulnerable in this form though, and damage will shut down your attacks once again. Playing the game will unlock additional Hyper Beams to select, from simple beams to rotating energy blades. All of them look and sound great, but you’ll likely find that some have much greater utility than others.
The controls aren’t perfect at this stage, and hopefully a couple of things will change before final release. Sometimes double tapping wouldn’t trigger my Hyper Beam. It could be that I wasn’t doing it quite right, but it was noticeable. I wouldn’t mind having the option to have a dedicated button to activate it rather than always having to double tap. The two hand control is great, but if you move the ships from one side of the screen to the other (so the left one is on the right and vice versa), it can become a little difficult to keep track of which hand controls which ship. Removing your hands from the screen then replacing them will reset which hand controls which, but when the screen becomes crowded (and it does get very busy once the difficulty ramps up) then that isn’t always something you want to do. Having each ship be a different colour may help here.
Other than that those issues, the game plays rather well, even with some time left for development. There are plenty of different enemies that all attack in different ways, meaning deciding how to position your ships at any point is important once the screen fills up with ships and bullets.The challenge is certainly there too, with games only lasting a few minutes before it all becomes too much. This being a score chasing game of survival means that the old “one more game” mentality can set in. It’s great for a quick blast, just beware that half an hour might pass by if you’re not paying attention!
The art style is very simple but works well for the game, reminding me of Geometry Wars to an extent. All the enemies are distinct and easy to identify (especially thanks to the enemy glossary the game includes) in spite of looking simple. Sometimes the enemies shots can be hard to identify against the background, but selecting a different colour scheme can help with this. Your ships are always clear and easy to identify in spite of the “which hand is controlling this ship” issue already mentioned. The music is very different, and has something of a creepy tinge to it. Each stage has a variant on the music, adding layers to it as you continue. The sound effects are clear and it’s obvious when enemy has been defeated whilst the Hyper Beams have a loud, powerful noise behind it, making it clear that you’re now taking the offensive.
In its current state, Hyper Beam is a solid iPhone title that certainly stands out from other touch control twin stick games. With a couple of adjustments I could see this being a lot of fun and something I would find myself dipping into whenever I had a spare few minutes. I look forward to seeing how this develops over the coming months.
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