Thank you Black Shell Media for sending us this game to review!

Hyperspace Invaders II: Pixel Edition is a music driven shoot ‘em up game that is intense with the confusing yet pretty clutter of pixel aliens and their bullets that you have to avoid.  Your character has an auto-firing gun that gets more powerful with each alien soul you collect.  Some aliens will drop a yellow power-up that temporarily gives you side-firing abilities.

With the on screen chaos, it’s sometimes hard to tell what is safe to touch and what you need to avoid.  If you do detect imminent danger, you can fire a laser beam that destroys enemy gunfire while reducing the power of your main weapon.  It’s a tough sacrifice so you’ll want to use it sparingly.

There are a wide variety of enemies and bosses to eliminate.  Sometimes they’re in Galaga formation, but most of the time they arrive in swarms and spray bullets in many different directions.  The bosses are larger than your standard foes and they have a thin red health bar on the top of the screen. 

Your weapon’s power level and max combos are indicated on the left-hand side while the song/level completion rate is shown on the bottom right-hand side.  Including the tutorial level, there are twelve songs/levels in total.  A Steam achievement is earned for fully completing each level.  This is easier said than done as the levels get complex within seconds.  

The aliens are drawn in a pixel art style and there’s a lot of eye candy mayhem that is sure to trigger epileptic seizures for those who are sensitive to them.  I was surprised that there wasn’t an epilepsy warning for this game as it surely needs one.  

The soundtrack consists of various electronica and techno tracks.  There’s a decent amount of variety, but none of the songs appealed to me or got stuck in my head.  The songs show their BPM and the higher it is: the harder they are to play.

You can use a gamepad or keyboard to play this game.  The controls are super easy and you just need to be able to move with the joystick or arrow keys and fire with the space bar or button on a gamepad.  The controls are easy enough for people of all ages to master.  Aside from shooting down aliens in self-defense there’s no moral issues in this game.  

If you like insane shoot ’em up games, then you’ll definitely want to look into Hyperspace Invaders II: Pixel Edition.  The price is a reasonable $4.99 but can be had for less on sale.  If you don’t mind flashing and flickering screens, I recommend adding it to your Steam wish list.