A Rich Person’s Game – Galaxy Invaders: Alien Shooter Review

There’s plenty to like in this game, but it’s ultimately flawed by one of the most predatory “pay to win” models I’ve seen. What’s good: game play. There’s something very satisfying about getting an overload power-up and wiping the board of enemies. Zipping around and shooting bug-like spaceships is fun, and the visual feedback is good. What’s bad: the advancement plateaus are brutal, and the cost of speeding things up by buying items is exorbitant. My approach when I start a new ad/pay game one of two things happen: the game is fun enough to tolerate the ads or it isn’t. After a week or so, if I’m having fun, I will usually pay to turn off ads. With this game, the basic subscription is worth going ad-free for 30 days. That’s the only good value in the game. (The elite subscription is definitely not worth four times the cost of the basic.) The problem is that after the initial advancement honeymoon, things slow WAY down. The process of advancing by collecting items is incredibly slow. You quickly reach a plateau where your ships, drones, and pilots aren’t strong enough to beat bosses, and the rate at which you get drops is effectively a trickle. The option is to buy gems to open loot boxes. Which, fine. That’s how these games work. But it doesn’t help much. Way too much of the “loot” is a piddling amount of gold (you’ll rarely lack for gold after you play for a few weeks because you won’t be able to spend improving ships stuck at an evolution plateau). The number of parts you need to evolve your ships increases far faster than the average drop rate. The cost of the gems packages is very high for what you get. I’m fine with a reasonable cost. Developers deserve to get paid. The monthly basic subscription isn’t bad, but everything else is ridiculous. The result is a game that plays well until you quickly get stalled waiting to collect enough stuff to move on. Your choice is to play the same levels over and over for weeks hoping you eventually get what you need to move up, or you pay for VERY expensive gems that still won’t get you what you need with any great speed. (In one 15-item X5 box, seven slots had 250 gold—are you KIDDING ME?) At this point, in my second month, I will play out my subscription and delete the game. By contrast, I’ve been playing another ad-or-pay game with a MUCH more reasonable advancement model for four years.
Review by BC Mystery on Galaxy Invaders: Alien Shooter.