Space Mercenary Defense Force is a five-dollar Vampire Survivors clone published by EastAsiaSoft. The biggest difference is that this auto-shooter takes place in space, and you defend against aliens instead of ghouls.
Beginning as a slow-moving spaceship with a pea shooter, the player gains access to new weaponry and upgrades as gold, which is obtained from fallen enemies, is collected. The same rules and gameplay that apply to Vampire Survivors is nearly identical here. One difference, although minor, is that the player can assign the location of new weapons to one of the available slots on any unlocked ship, adding one more strategic layer to the combat. In time, new ships can be purchased, each with strengths and weaknesses as well as available weapon slots.
Every thirty seconds or so, the player will probably collect gold to unlock the next upgrade, which makes the game fun and addicting. The constant upgrades are an engaging reward for defending your home planet. You are also going to need all the firepower you can get as the swarms of enemies grow in strength and number as you do. There is never a moment to relax and surviving the time limit is challenging, fun, and satisfying.
Unlike other auto-shooters, the player will occasionally encounter a boss fight in which the screen stops scrolling until the boss is defeated. Defeating these baddies also reward the player with more upgrades and can be a breath of fresh air as concentrating on fighting one bigger enemy instead of trying to survive and crowd-control a throng of enemies are two different experiences.
My biggest complaint concerns the visual design. Even though some aliens are cheap looking, like the squid things, the overly large and unnecessary planet in the background is distracting and annoying. Instead of fighting against a solid black/starry background, the player must contend with the colors of this large sphere which makes it hard to distinguish some enemies and their bullets. It is over-designed and makes the challenge more difficult than it should be.
Space Mercenary Defense Force is another me-too clone trying to milk the popular Vampire Survivors gameplay. There is plenty of content to unlock, which will easily take many hours to grind. There is a lot of quality content here, it only costs five bucks, and it is one of the better auto-clones recently released.
SCORE: 7.5/10
Better Than: Stickman Arena
Also Play: Star Control 2
Wait For It: the 6 other auto-shooter to release next week
By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com
Twitter: @ZackGaz
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