GC '10: Hands on with Galaxy on Fire 2 on iPad

Galaxy on Fire 2 has travelled light years since it was released on mobile last year.

It’s been in development for iPhone and iPad for a year, during which time Fishlabs has more or less remade the game from scratch, turning a jagged space-trader designed for a screen smaller than a Post-it note into a smooth-contoured, lens-flaring extravaganza that you could easily mistake for Freelancer on PC.

Adopting the role of mercenary pilot Keith Maxwell, you have to fly from planet to planet trading commodities and taking on jobs in order to earn enough money to make your way home after a hyperdrive malfunction sends you spinning confused into the void.

You pick up missions at space stations, where various characters hang out in lounges dispensing jobs that cast you as, amongst other things, assassin, postman, and refuse collector. You can also spend time choosing and augmenting your craft with a huge number of items, many of which are necessary for completing certain missions, while others just make progress easier.

If you’re going to mine, for example, you need mining equipment. If you want to collect the detritus left behind by defeated foes, you need a tractor beam. If you want to stand a chance of surviving certain confrontations, you need turrets. If you want to more easily identify types of ore for mining, you need a scanner. If you want your ship to be more manoeuvrable, you need thrusters. And so on.

The key phrase is ‘if you want’. Galaxy on Fire 2’s depth comes in part from the sheer number of ships and augmentations it offers and the ways in which you can put them together.

You can even obtain blueprints for upgrades, meaning that as long as you have the constituent parts you can build them yourself. Neat touches like the inclusion of highest and lowest historic values for traded commodities help streamline the process of accumulating wealth in the quotidian world of commerce.

The periods when you’re actually piloting your craft is where Fishlabs’s efforts are most immediately evident. Galaxy on Fire 2 is beautiful: stars grow and shrink with lens flare, silhouetting your ship theatrically whenever you swing one into the middle of the screen; explosions flash and then throw out discs of fire; cloud nebulae and planets hang in space like paintings; rust-coloured 'atmospheric fog' intermittently surrounds your craft.

The interface is straightforward, with on-screen buttons for steering your ship, thrusting, firing cannons and rockets, and automatically docking. The Y axis is inverted by default, which will appeal to as many players as it bemuses. Thankfully, you can un-invert it in the options.

The radar is particularly elegant, taking the form of a discreet oval ring encircling about a third of the screen, with friendly and unfriendly craft represented by green and red dots. It's prominent when you're looking at it, and invisible when you're not.

Combat is initially fiddly, as you attempt to strafe ships in frictionless 3D space while controlling your own ship, and at the outset (I didn't play for long) your ship feels a touch weedy. Flying a beefed up craft with upgraded cannons and turrets on the back is likely to be more gratifying. In another nice touch, double-tapping on the 'fire' button starts autofire, leaving you to concentrate on flying in particularly feverish battles.

Fishlabs has been keen to draw attention to the sound in Galaxy on Fire 2, and this is another area of dramatic improvement over the MIDI sound in the J2ME game. Ambient space noises pump atmosphere into the slower sections, and when things hot up the music responds contextually, swelling and subsiding in proportion to the number of people trying to shoot you in the brain.

Unfortunately, multiplayer is a notable omission. Social gaming features are planned, although it's not yet known which of the App Store social gaming platforms will be used.

Fishlabs also plans to supply mission packs as DLC.

So far, Galaxy on Fire 2 looks to be living up to very high expectations. I didn't spend anything like enough time with it to get into the upgrade system or build my character, but a browse through the copious menus, a few conversations with NPCs at the space lounge, and a spell behind the joystick of a spacecraft taking down hapless fellow spacegoers promised a deep and polished experience.

We'll know for sure when Galaxy on Fire 2 hits the App Store for iPhone and iPad in October.