Waves is a splendid game. I first encountered it at the Eurogamer Expo back when I was an RPS baby, and its frantic twinstick shooting and shimmering screen of colours immediately coaxed me into a spaced-out bliss zone. Last year, one-person dev studio Rob Hale launched a Kickstarter to fund a sequel, Waves: Arena Tactics. That didn’t work out quite as intended but Hale reckons that’s all for the best and has now released Waves [official site] into Early Access. You can see it in action below.

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Gorgeous, punishing and rare, Waves was a top-down twin-stick shooter that did more with a single screen and five minute bursts of action than some first-person shooters do with world-spanning multi-million dollar campaigns. I first played it at the Eurogamer Expo and, upon remembering that I’m cack-handed when it comes to speedy action, I shrank away from the controller to save face. And then I went home and bought it to practice in the safety of my own home. The sequel has just arrived on Kickstarter, after two years of development, and 30,000 is needed to complete the design. It looks fantastic, adding procedurally generated arenas, online multiplayer, new weapons and much more. Video below.

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It’s been almost two years since twin-stick shooter Waves was released, which means fans of its searing neon and frantic fighting are probably shivering and picking scabs from their eyeballs due to withdrawl symptoms. They should pick faster, because developers Squid In A Box announced a follow-up this weekend, and the first trailer is below. (more…)

I’ve not put anywhere near as much time as I’d have liked into Rob ‘Squid in a Box’ Hale’s graceful-but-frantic twin-stick shooter Waves, which has built up quite a following in recent weeks – as well as snagging the coveted RPS ‘best use of the Unreal engine’ award at Indievisibility the other week. I did, however, discover the other day that it runs rather well on my laptop’s integrated Intel graphics thinger, so I expect to spend a fair bit of time shooting shapes while hiding in the bathroom from my girlfriend’s extended family over Christmas. (That’s ‘shooting shapes’, not ‘shooting up’, heroin fans).

It’s just had a healthy free update, adding a sixth mode known as Chase, known variously as ‘the hardest mode yet’ and ‘the speed metal of shmups’, so masochistic nutters will be delighted. (more…)