Broken Pearl

Broken Pearl is a top-down vertical-scrolling shooter that comes at you with great looking retro graphics and crazy fast-paced gameplay. There are two ships to choose from and endless waves of enemies to blast out of the sky.

Broken Pearl follows in the footsteps of old-school arcade top downs that made you melt the controls. It starts off light on enemies and after a couple of minutes in, you have less and less space in which to dodge enemy fire, it keeps you very alert.

Ship manoeuvrability is rather responsive but the game is best played using a joystick. Keyboard gameplay is solid but if you know you do better using a controller, then go right ahead. Enemies come at you in all shapes and sizes and unleash tons of lasers, bombs and whatever alien tech they're equipped with.

Like with the classics, after destroying specific ships you get powerups that once collected grant you fire upgrades, bonus multipliers and Smart Bombs. The latter will prove very handy since once you use one, it can wipe clean an entire screen that is full of enemy ships.

Apart from clearing each stage, you will also have to choose from one of several missions that can grant you specific bonuses depending on the one you choose. They mostly have to do with killing a specific ship or number of ships, and you get a HUD indicator of the mission’s status.

In Broken Pearl you can also free aiding units such as Aurums. Once you blast their prisons, they latch on to your ship and start firing at the enemy ships. They come in handy and you can equip up to 4 of them at a time.

Broken Pearl hits the spot if you’re looking for a challenging top down shooter. It’s got really nice graphics, a great soundtrack and plenty of action to go with everything else.