Really Big Sky (RBS) is a modern, arcade-like shoot-em-up (shmup). The space graphics are colorful and crisp with some cartoony-like sprites that manage to not look out of place. The soundtrack is trance-based and gets you in the mood of wanting to defeat your enemies without blowing yourself up from running into a planet, enemy lasers, or other environment obstacles. RBS is a fun game and play sessions can be made to be long or short depending on how skilled you are.

I enjoyed RBS in short chunks of time. It is that sort of game that you can easily put down and not feel sucked into needing to play every day. Classic mode is like an arcade game but you only have one life. This may seem discouraging for new players, but the randomization of the levels along with the message about exploration the first time you play encourages you to keep playing. It’s a very skill-based game despite its attempts at giving a backstory, which I found to be unnecessary for this type of game–it’s sort of like giving Space Invaders a story – it’s superfluous. There is also an Endless mode that’s the complete opposite of Classic mode and is good for really exploring the different types of enemies you can encounter. However, it’s really more for practice than picking up currency to upgrade your ship’s abilities.

While I don’t feel compelled to “finish” the game or become significantly skilled at it, I did find it was a good break when I felt like playing something quick. I just wish the two intro screens would load faster, then it would be perfect. I imagine this game will stick around on my computer for a few more weeks until I notice I haven’t touched it and don’t want to play it any more. That’s how a lot of the games I’ve sampled so far have ended up. I may pick it up again in the future, but for now, it will live on my desktop, available when I want to play.

The game is a side scrolling shmup and the pacing varies depending on what’s going on. If you’re drilling through a planet, the pace goes a little slower. If you’re flying through a gas planet, it’s a little faster. Certain bosses can stop the scrolling. While movement along the x-axis has a base speed according to the scrolling, you can move around the screen. You can also direct the direction of your lasers in a full 360 degrees which is pretty nice.

The game has two choices for controls – a controller or keyboard/mouse. Being a PC gamer, I chose the keyboard/mouse. While the Enter key is useful in most other environments for selection, I felt with my left hand on the keyboard (WASD) and my right hand on the mouse, it was a little inconvenient looking for that key. Spacebar would have been a better alternative and doesn’t interfere with any other interface functionalities. During game play, I didn’t have any glaring issues. I did notice that my muscle memory for aiming is a bit off, as I’d be trying to pay attention to where my positioning was relative to income missiles, but not hitting my targets.

The graphics are quite nice although every time I encounter a particular type of boss, it has a tendency to lock up. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m playing on a machine that’s not built well for gaming or if there’s something else causing the issue. I’m thinking it’s my specs not being powerful enough because of the effects this boss has. Otherwise, I enjoyed the colorful graphics, especially the nebula-like effect of the gas planets – these make you feel like you’re really playing out in space and remind me of the pictures from the Hubble space telescope. I was also impressed how the different sprites and environment objects fit together despite seeming to be of different styles. For example, there is a bomb environment that is soft-focused contrasted with the crispness of enemy ships that have a little more of a cartoony feel with their bright colors and sci-fi shapes.

I also enjoyed the soundtrack which doesn’t get redundant even after dying multiple times a few seconds into each round. The Endless mode has more tracks but there can be abrupt switching and is less intense and upbeat than Classic mode. I felt each part of Endless mode had stages and once you finished one stage and moved into another, the track changed. Since I don’t have infinite lives and am not very skilled in Classic mode, I don’t get far enough, often enough, to notice if the track changes or not.

There are a lot of little specificities that I am inclined to gloss over, yet they are part of the game. One major aspect of the scrolling shmup is the concept of planets that you can drill through through if it’s a solid planet or fly through if it’s a gas planet. Both planets give bonuses, but you have to drill through a certain area in the solid planet or fly through a hoop in the gas planet. Another aspect is destroying enemy ships and collecting the shards they leave behind. This is currency for upgrading your ship with a variety of different features like a bomb that randomly spawns, shooting lasers at 45deg angles, and so on. Some of the upgrades are for co-op mode only. Perform well enough or complete certain feats, like upgrading one feature to its maximum, will unlock other modes of play. I haven’t gotten this far yet.

As I already mentioned, I am planning on playing this game past the one week mark. It has an arcade feel to it, something you can play for a little bit and put down, then return later without feeling guilty that you haven’t been playing. There are social components, like posting your score to Twitter and Facebook, but I’m not one for leaderboards and advertising my in-game achievements, but these might be motivation for shmup fans.