Shooty Skies Is A Game About Shooting In The Sky, And It Is Great

Shooty Skies takes the addictive formula that made road-crossing mobile game Crossy Road a smash hit and applies it to the scrolling shooter. In honor of this I’ve taken the same headline from our first Crossy Road articleand applied it to this one.

Crossy Road creators Matt Hall and Andy Sum have teamed with entertainment industry veterans Ben Britten and Matt Ditton to bring the blockbuster success to a whole new level. The core ideas are the same—short play sessions, regular rewards of new characters that change the background of the action and stimulate the collector instinct. It’s the exact same framework and style applied to a whole new genre.

Steering an auto-firing aircraft across the sky, blowing blocky enemies into their component pixels is so much more enticing than tapping a chicken across the road. Plus there’s a sense of hope to Shooty Skies that Crossy Road lacked—I knew I was going to get hit by a car or train eventually, but here if I can dodge just right I may be able to keep going forever…nope, I’m dead.

Shooty Skies is currently available as a free download for iOS, with an Android version coming some day. As free-to-play games go it’s one of the least annoying of the lot—no play limits, no constant nagging—just the option to watch a video to continue and the odd advertisement for a $.99 character. The only major obstacle you’ll run into is stopping.

Contact the author at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter at @bunnyspatial, or just knock on the bathroom door. Mind the explodey noises.