From the depths of the Unity engine, and the ##Indie-Games IRC channel on FreeNode, comes UFO Explorer, a game of skill, speed, and finesse.
The first release for Double Finger Play Games Studio, UFO Explorer has you navigating extraterrestrial caverns haunted by alien machines in a UFO modified to use rockets as its propulsion. Pressing right will activate the right-side rocket, causing you to go left, the opposite is true when pressing left. This inverted control scheme is the first level of difficulty to UFO Explorer, but I was surprised how quickly one adapts to it.
Yes. This is not an easy game. After using rockets on opposite sides of the craft becomes second nature, you’ll notice that they are quite powerful and will build to unsafe speeds fairly quickly, while the twists and turns of the surrounding caverns requires much more control of the craft than would initially seem possible.
Crashing will happen often. I’m not aware of the precise details concerning the set of after-market modifications this UFO received before being featured in the game, but what seems certain is that seatbelts and airbags do not come as standard. For brakes you’ll only have your hands on the accelerators, and good old gravity (where available).
What shouldn’t be overlooked is that this is a beautiful game. Its sci-fi themed rocky caverns are filled with neon-trimmed machinery, and this is topped off with the subtle lighting effects of the Unity engine in 2D mode. The game is completely free, and available for Android, with iOS and Windows Phone coming soon. A remastered PC version is also a possibility, but I’m hoping that the developers will make the PC port that I tested available before that.
