Triphids is an arcade-like space shooter for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The game features an ?Arcade? mode and a ?Perpetual? mode. In both modes of this game, you are a space ship around a fixed circle, shooting flashing pixels at aliens, who are shooting back at you. Your ship fires much faster than theirs, as long as the gun doesn?t overheat. If the gun overheats, the pixilated bullets will come out much slower, but it will not directly affect the survival of your ship. This shooting mechanism is decent at best. As the shooting and moving controls are the same, I?d love to see a button designated specifically to shooting in the future. This problem is further compounded by the fact that the aliens? return fire is near impossible to see, constantly giving your opponent the upper hand. The sounds feel like they were taken right out of an old-school arcade; the background music and in-game sound effects are all 8-bit. The game has both local high and global high scoreboards. Your scores are calculated based on the time you stay alive and the amount of alien scum you destroy. In the ?Arcade? mode, you advance by killing every alien on each stage, working your way through the solar system. Every few stages, you encounter a boss, which you handle much the same way as the other enemies, by dodging and firing. The bosses are very demanding and really quite frustrating, but this may bode well for old-school gamers who miss that 8-bit challenge.
Even though you are only given five lives, you have the opportunity to gain a life every time you earn 50,000 points in both Arcade and Perpetual mode. The Arcade mode is the most linear method of play, but there really is no discernable story, unlike most games today. The difficulty of the bosses and the very limited lives will keep you from beating the game without a lot of practice. In the ?Perpetual? mode, there are no breaks for different stages, only a constant flow of aliens to destroy, without any bosses. The intensity of this mode made it more enjoyable than Arcade, as I found the bosses to be quite annoying. At the time of this review, Triphids is priced at $.99. Triphids has a great retro feel, and would be perfect for fans of the genre, but for the average gamer there?s very little replay value.