Musical shooter Radio Flare tuning into iPhone
Looks (or sounds) a bit like Rez
Austrian developer Studio Radiolaris has announced its first iPhone game, Radio Flare, which kicks off the new studio's approach to combining music and games on the Apple handset.
Radio Flare places you in control of a space ship equipped with a sonification beam that desynchronises space debris. The game makes use of the iPhone's multi-touch facility, allowing you to control the ship with one thumb and target the debris with the other. Once targeted, the enemies are desynchronised in time to the beat and blast out radio flares, intensifying the excellent soundtrack by Berlin-based electronic musician DJ Glow.
"Radio Flare immerses the player in music. It's not about reproducing a song but about turning music into an interactive experience," explains Fares Kayali.
"Our focus was on devising intuitive controls for a traditional genre on a platform with unique capabilities. Everything you do in this shooter is part of the soundtrack, every shot and every maneuver is in rhythm," adds Martin Pichlmair.
Overlooking, for the moment, the fact that there's no sound in space (sorry – I've been watching a lot of Big Bang Theory lately) Radio Flare looks quite similar to the XBLA (and Dreamcast) game Rez (and, by extention, the PSP's Rex-clone, Everyday Shooter), with shades of our favourite free app of the moment, Space Deadbeef – both strong sales points that'll keep us excited until the game launches (hopefully this side of Christmas).
In the meantime, check out the demo video below, and don't forget to pump up the volume.
