Sky Force 2014 is a shoot ’em up I have played casually the past few months. I can recommend it if you are looking for a good vertical shooter as it’s gorgeous and well made although it does become repetitive. It’s out on Android and iOS. I played it on Android (version 1.33). I am mostly done with the game as I finished the last level, finished some levels on Nightmare and am maxed out on both Missiles and the Main gun. It was made by iDreams.
On to the review
– The game has great graphics. It all looks very nicely done, ships, enemies, interface, background. The only negative point here is that there can be a lot on the screen at once; especially on the higher difficulty’s where a lot of collectible stars appear (the currency with which you upgrade your ship).
– The way you upgrade your ship is nicely done. You start out with a pea shooter and can upgrade your ship intuitively. This also includes special weapons (Laser, Shield and a Mega-Bomb) This is *very* necessary for the higher difficulty levels and it will take hundreds of games to max out your ship. Initially this isn’t much of a problem, but by now I’m pretty sick of the same levels.
– The level design is solid. The game has roughly 9 levels, all of which contain a ‘end boss’ with one or more phases. You can play each level on four difficulty levels, with each difficulty level increasing the points / stars you get while also increasing enemy damage / hit points and how fast they appear. To get to the next difficulty level you have to finish four goals for that level, which is a nice way of doing this. Biggest negative here is that it could really use more levels, which is one of the reasons I found it become repetitive.
– In game purchases are relatively well done. You can pay a small amount of money to remove the ads, which I did. Other than that you can play the game without paying a dime. You can buy more stars, but those are very expensive for how many you get (which is a mistake in my opinion). Also, you have a limited number of ships, but as they recharge relatively fast and you can buy extra one’s with stars you can pretty much keep playing continually.
– The achievements are pretty good. They make you try stuff you haven’t tried before. Be warned though: The last few are extremely grindy, I just got the 100 medal one and I still have a bunch left to collect (one is 500.000 stars). There are also cards you can collect which give you bonuses. This is pretty nice as you only get them if you don’t die in the level. Which makes it a bit nicer to replay levels you have already finished.
– There’s a multiplayer mode; but I haven’t been able to try it out as I don’t want to connect the game to Facebook. This is another negative point in my opinion as I don’t see why that should be a necessity.
All in all, I found it fun enough to list here as I have come back regularly to play a few levels for the next ship upgrade. If you decide to try it out, I can recommend the fifth level; it’s the best for farming stars and honestly I enjoyed that level the most out of all the other levels because it’s a quite different beast. Also a tip: When you are going for the last few goals for a level, consider using some stars to buy a shield and / or laser, as that can make the difference in the difficult situations.
