Super Ox Wars - Vertical Shooter by Llamasoft

[Royce]

[AnarKitty]

Another Jeff Minter shooter, always a good thing. Has anyone tried it yet?

[aeranth]

Oh my, insta-buy. So excited right now. To me, Minter is among the leading lights of the iOS experience. Although, I wasn't all that thrilled with Five-a-Day, Minotaur Rescue and Gridrunner remain highly regarded, certainly among my favourite apps. Off to download now!

[Royce]

Originally Posted by AnarKitty

Another Jeff Minter shooter, always a good thing. Has anyone tried it yet?

Loving it so far. He didn't try to get funky with the controls, so it has spot on relative touch. It's a polarity shooter of sorts, where there are two different powerup types that switch you between two attacks, blue stars and red hearts. I haven't figured out yet how polarity affects scoring or different enemies, if at all. Overall, it's pretty much what you expect from Llamasoft, a retro acid trip of weird arcade memories, arcade action, great controls, etc., applied to a vertical shooter. The package is similar to Gridrunner, a very arcade machine feel.

Okay so with the polarity, your score is separated by ox (each weapon type/ship state is represented by a different ox), so you can go for a high score with either ox or combined. There are four leaderboards, one for each ox, one for combined, and one for pure. Otherwise the only trick is that switching reduces you to no powerups, so you're better building up either one or the other at any given time. Your powerups slowly degrade though so you constantly have to pick up more to keep your firepower up. Sorry if that explanation sucks. I'm very tired and Llamasoft games mess up my brain

[metalcasket]

omg omg omg. Insta-frickin'-shut up and take my money!

[CygnetSeven]

Someone call me an ambulance...

[aeranth]

Always a cause for celebration, a new Minter title is always welcome.
This seems to be similar to Gridrunner with some interesting additions: vertical scrolling and an (at least initially, baffling) Ikaruga/polarity element that determines attack strength and/or defense, along with a color specific scoring system. Really, nothing not to like about this so far. Suitably acid drenched? Check. Sumptous futuristic retro goodness? Check. Classic gameplay freshly re-imagined? Check. Help yourself out and pick this up immediately, please.

[McGannahann]

Finally

[Rad]

The game Looks Great ! Just bought it like all their other games. If you haven't gone to their web site its a great read. I Like what their doing on the farm with all the critters.

Hope they one day make a game like Gorf !

Like always Great job developers, looking forward to the next one.

[Royce]

I got the skinny on the polarity effects from Minter's blog. He delivers the information gradually over the course of the article in which he strays at length into discussions Amazonian ox rituals and so forth. So for anyone who just wants to know how it works, here are the key points:

-You assume the polarity of each ox by shooting or collecting items of their colors on the ground

-The more you collect for one ox, the deeper you are into that polarity. This is indicated by the two bulls pushing against each other under the score.

-As you get deeper into a polarity, extra lives and pickups for that polarity become more common. Pickups increase your firepower.

-Each polarity also has a defensive characteristic that becomes stronger the further you swing to that pole. Caprichoso causes the ship to repel shots. Garantido causes your own shots to push back enemy shots.

-Picking up items of the opposite polarity quickly swings the balance the other direction.

-Bull shaped turrets colored like each ox will fire more at you if they don't match your polarity.

The article also stresses that it doesn't really matter too much if you want to ignore all this. It was designed so you can just blast away if you want to.