Galactix is a verical-shooter action game in which you must defeat wave after wave of enemy alien spacecrafts in order to defend Earth from invasion.
The graphics are decent. There's really not much to it. The game background doesn't scroll such as in Raptor or Tyrian, and the many games of that style. There is floating space debris, however, which is purely for visual effect and has no interaction with any element in the game. The UI features a standard health meter and counter showing available missiles and bombs.
The game features 100 levels of slightly-increasing difficulty, with "bosses" at levels 30 and 100. There are 3 basic types of enemies encountered throughout the game that you must battle as part of a 5-wave repeating format. The first wave will consist of enemies of the first type, and the next wave will consist of the next type, and so on until you start fighting all 3 variations of enemy simultaneously.
Your spacecraft comes equipped with a basic set of lasers which can be upgraded through weapon pickups. The pickups need to be grabbed through the use of a grappling hook/claw that you deploy at will. Originally, this feature was designed to be used by the "Mouse3" or middle-mouse button. This is the first game that
I can remember ever utilizing a 3-button arrangement.
The claw extends all the way to the far end of the screen before retracting to your ship. If you are able to make contact with a weapon upgrade on the way out, the claw will turn back immediately and save you the time of having to go the rest of the way down the screen. Also in your arsenal are missiles and bombs. Missiles offer increased damage to an enemy ship, effectively killing it instantly (with the exception of Bosses, of course). The bombs will essentially wipe out everything on the screen, including enemy fire. This comes in handy when fighting bosses as not only will he be shooting an array of bullets at you, but there may be enemy craft as well, trying to ruin your day.
The game is quite simple, and can be somewhat tedious, especially after you've played sixty or seventy levels, but fear not, for if you can make it to level 100, you will be in for quite a challenge. Missiles and bombs will be your best friend here, and so long as you can stay alive long enough to defeat the final mission, then consider yourself savior of planet Earth!
