Today, we’ll review “Inter-Galactic Space Bugs” by “Scootersoft”, a vertical scrolling space shooter, in which you play an outer-space pest controller trying to get rid of all kind of insects, bugs, and other nasty creatures. Ready to take off? Great!

See the motion blur? Yes, panta rhei.

Extra-terrestrial!

If a game looks like “Bats” and – literally – sounds like the “Asteroids”, it has an easy play on me. The gameplay feels like driving home for Christmas and who doesn’t like that warm, soft, retro feeling bringing back old childhood memories?

Nevertheless, it’s a modern adaptation and optimized for mobile devices – in an innovative way. The controls are – wait for it – unique and unseen in a game like that. Until now, I only knew space shooters, in which you either have to steer the spaceship and it fires automatically or you do both with on-screen buttons. The developers of “Inter-Galactic Space Bugs” found a third way: If you press the left (or right) side of the screen, your ship goes to the left (or right) and shoots a laser bullet simultaneously. No movement, no fire. No fire, no movement. That works like a charm and I’m honestly impressed!

Plus, it is such a welcome change to actually have real levels again. All the time I have to play endless runners and endless shooters, so I am grateful for every game granting an old man short breaks to catch breath and start fresh.

Extra-curricular?

There are, however, a few things that seem unintentional or unfortunate.

I actually like the dosed and controlled amount of action on the screen, but when it comes to user-friendliness and visibility, reducing the dots and particles on the screen would be an additional help. There is a common problem with space shooters to mistake enemy bullets with stars or astro-garbage and there is a common solution to this: Less is more!

Secondly, I’d like to talk about ads. Don’t get me wrong – I know that also developers need to make money and I support indie devs wherever I can, but I think that Scootersoft chose a way to monetize their app, that is both annoying for the users and not very beneficial for the company. Let’s take the users perspective: Space shooters are very intense in a visual way, and having a permanently visible advertisement on top of the screen (from where the enemies usually appear) is very distracting and interrupts the player, while they focus on the gameplay. Not good.

From a business perspective, I don’t believe that the CTR (click through rate) of this advertisement is particularly high, since you don’t earn much money through Ad Impressions. It’s the conversion, the click, registering or purchase that counts and I can’t imagine many users will click on an ad, while both of their hands are occupied fighting space bugs in an action-packed space shooter scenery. Why not displaying an advertisement between each and every level? Or if you die? If the user isn’t otherwise occupied, he’ll get the chance to let the ad sink in – and if it’s relevant and interesting – click on it, too!

Lightyears away from earth and I still have to deal with bloody mosquitoes…

The Verdict

“Inter-Galactic Space Bugs” is a very cool space shooter with unique controls and a great retro feeling. No matter if the ads bother you or not, you should download the game here!

All pictures are in-game screenshots.