Death Ray Santa

Shoot ‘em ups are not as common as they once were, although indie developers continue to design incredible examples. The level of skill most of these games require appears to be too high for gamers today, because most are accustomed to autosave functions and very simple gameplay mechanics. When the screen is covered in projectiles, explosions and enemies coming at you all at once, things stop being so simple.

Death Ray Santa is a twin-stick shooter in which you control Santa as he tries to avoid being shredded to pieces by a variety of violent enemies. The game is inspired by a very similar indie production called Death Ray Manta, so if you happened to play that one, this should be quite familiar. Naturally, the main difference is the theme of the game, because this one is in tune with the Christmas holidays.

There is no other purpose than survival, which means that there is no story either. It all starts with Santa spawning at the center of the level and dozens of enemies starting to attack and move toward him. As you manage to kill enough of them, you just keep jumping from level to level, while the difficulty level steadily increases over time to upgrade the challenge as well.

Bombs litter the levels as well, which means that you have to pay attention to the map if you decide to move. Staying still helps you work around this problem, but it may not be such a good idea, because it’s a sure way to get hit by enemy projectiles. The number of mines and bombs increases with each stage as well, depending on how far you manage to get.

Speaking of which, high scores are registered globally, so you stand a chance to be featured at the top of the list if you manage to survive for long enough. As far as the graphics are concerned, they are excessively colorful, which might make it difficult to distinguish individual obstacles and enemies. However, you can easily get used to it after a while, at least if you put your mind to it.

Although Death Ray Santa is not the kind of game to keep you busy for hours on end, it can be the perfect distraction for when you have a couple of minutes to spare. Hence, if you are a fan of shoot ‘em ups and you are in the mood for a Christmas-themed game, this is one of the better choices you can make.