SPATHA

About the Game

A side-scrolling shooter, from the cockpit

Terrain rushes past the canopy. Walls close in. Bosses loom above you. SPATHA takes the arcade shooter of the 1980s and puts you in the pilot's seat — while keeping the precise, readable play of a classic side-scroller.

Three views, one ship

Three screens fly with you, all at once:

• Front view — the pilot's eye. What's coming straight at you, and how far it is.

• Side view — the terrain from the side. Ceilings, floors and the gaps between them.

• Top view — the ground from above. Lanes, flanks, and what's coming up behind.

Every enemy, bullet and stone appears in every view, as it is. Read all three, and pick the view you steer from — the one that fits the moment. Switching well is the skill.

Magic stones, your loadout

The Ordo's beasts carry red crystals inside their bodies. Shoot them down, collect the magic stones, and spend them on what you want, when you want it: SPEED, MISSILE, TWIN, BEAM, OPTION and SHIELD. Missiles drop and crawl along the ground. TWIN fires forward and up. BEAM grows as you hold the button, then flies free.

Lose your ship and you lose your weapons — but they spill out as stones where you fell. You come right back into the fight and can win them back.

Seven worlds, seven surprises

The Ordo latch onto worlds and hollow them into nests. One by one, you dive inside.

• A mining pit deep inside a lava asteroid, where the Ordo run a crystal refinery

• A hollowed-out moon whose space folds back on itself — fly off the top and come in from the bottom

• The ancient geoglyphs of a vanished civilisation, on a planet you dive into through fire

• A test space colony, its spin stopped and its gravity rewritten

• A dark sea beneath the ice of a frozen moon

• A living underworld of lava and cells

• The fortress at the very heart of the moon

Each world has one idea of its own, and at the end of every one, the guardian Orbis waits.

Arcade at heart

• Learn the stages, master the loadout, chase the high score

• Clear all seven and the next loop begins — harder

• Gamepad, arcade stick and keyboard

• Original soundtrack

• Buy once. No ads, no microtransactions