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If there’s one genre that has been disheartening and lackluster in the fun factor department, it’d be shooters. While there are a few shooters that are fantastic (Venger ($3.99 – Free Demo), rRootage (Free), and Blue Skies ($5.99 – Free Demo) there are more bad shooters than fun ones.
It’d be an understatement if I said I am a little leery when I see shooters show up in the App Store. The secrets to success for shooters on the iPhone is to have good control, pacing, and most importantly, size does matter. Game assets can’t be too big, but not too small either. Developers really have to take into account the small screen while still making sure the action is engaging and challenging without being frustrating.
Draconis ($2.99) is an arcade style 2D/3D top-down shooter from DracSoft. First impressions after ten minutes of playing shows that Draconis has potential but the tilt controls is a bit too sensitive and imprecise for a shooter (there’s no sensitivity setting to adjust) and the pacing is off, with the game getting incredibly difficult on just the second level.
Draconis features are:
- Tilt your phone to move your ship up/down/left/right.
- Hold one finger on the phone to fire standard shots.
- Tap two fingers to fire your special attack.
- Tap the top and bottom of the screen at the same time to pause for a breather!
- When you die, tap the screen where you wish to repawn.
If you’d like to see Draconis in action, the developer linked to a video review done by MobiRiot.
Update: The developer wrote in and let us know that a future update will add the option to adjust sensitivity for the tilt controls, and he’ll be balancing out the difficulty in certain areas.
Just to let people know, the 1.10 update is now in iTunes! Enjoy!