Death Ray Manta SE
Death Ray Manta has lasers in his head
He blew up his house, now he lives in space instead.
DEATH RAY MANTA
Two sticks, one fish, some flashing lights. Death Ray Manta is, quite definitely, a videogame in the purest sense. Rejigged, rebuilt, remastered for Steam in the year of our Molyneux 2015.
Death Ray Manta is a short form top down arena shooter where you blow up enemies using colourful laserbeams. You spawn in the centre of the screen, moments later the screen is filled with mines, robots, rabbits and lasers from beyond the stars. Collect space gems for a bonus and shoot everything else that you can in order to flash lights at yourself. Aim for your own personal high score. How far into fish space can you get?
32 screens of increasingly colourful and crazy laser firing mayhem from the brains behind (amongst other things) Squid Yes, Not So Octopus, SYNSO 2 and the challenge mode in Waves. Also, he’s that hairy dude off the internet. You know the one.
Death Ray Manta is made with the fine assistance of Mike Daw who provided the legwarmer chic tunes and Andy White, who helped out under the hood and kept me sane. Cover art by the legendary Ste Pickford.
“Absolutely Brilliant!” – Rob Fearon
Game Discussion
Steam User 0
A bloomin' brilliant little game. Some recent reviews seem to misunderstand what this is - it's arcade fun in a very pure form: no hand-holding, just straight in to the game with 1 life, no online features, eyeball melting neon effects and an awesome retro synthwave soundtrack. It's designed for short blasts of fun (your eyeballs probably would not take long sessions!).
It took me a couple of sessions to work out the rules which (I think) are:
- Shoot / avoid enemies and their projectiles
- Collect the shiny object
- Shoot / avoid the obstacles (triangles - I thought these were collectables and I died more than once)
Each stage is really quick to run through and you're straight into the next one - it's a hectic pace and there is a LOT happening on your screen. It's not a long game, but it will take you a while, and many deaths, to get through the stages.
If you like Geometry Wars style games, if you like psychedelic games (like any number of Llamasoft games) - then I'm sure you'll enjoy this. I played this with a massive grin on my face throughout - it's so fun and uplifting.
Only things I noted that could be improved:
- It would be good to have the option to start another run on death (however, this is nit-picking as it only takes a couple of seconds to do so from the start screen)
- Would love for the soundtrack to be released on Steam too!
NOTE: 'I am a strong fish, I am a beautiful fish' may become your morning affirmations ;)
Steam User 0
runs great on deck