Damnit. Bought it without doing the trial and it's fecking nothing like Tempest. Really very boring so far. I may be missing something but it's all fairly pointless.
It does pick up. Quite dramatically! The first list of levels is actually really dull. Every new section seems to act as a tutorial for a new technique but they do seem to have included a LOT of techniques. I'm wondering when I get to the actual main game! But the intensity seriously ramps up and the addiction is beginning to bite.
Has anyone actually played this, as i don't appear to have got anyone on my friends list that i've picked up from edge/twitter over the years, just a couple of bods from the llamasoft forums, I'm jonesing for more real worldish people to compare to (rather than trying to chase the superhumans in the top-50's)
Game-wise I was a bit down on it to start with, visual/aural techniques from space giraffe/tempest definitly helped, but overall it felt very easy, and a bit slow, and kinda like a bonus stage from the aforementioned games.
Level 8 though (3 lives to match as many pairs as possible in an unlimited timeframe) is now my go to score challenge, i just love it
Beyond that it started to ramp up in complexity and difficulty, and i was now starting to scrape a 2-star finish, then I hit the "Perform a 175m/215m/275m length lance" challenge and got properly stuck, until i just scraped through with 190-ish
Then it  added yet more enemy types, and it has now become rather stressful, but in a good way (think space giraffe post lvl 70)
So, if anyone else is playing, please add random_dave
Not sure how good an impression the trial would give tbh, if it's say, the first 6 challenges it'll probably seem incredibly boring, no monetary loss in trying though
I've been really excited about this & was going to pick it up as soon as I've finished Sleeping Dogs. After seeing that video THERE IS NO FUCKING WAY I'M GOING TO WORK SO I CAN GIVE MONEY TO THAT PRICK.
I can't imagine wanting to talk to any games developer. The only ones I know are car nuts working on car games. And I know them because they're petrolheads, not gamers.
I'm very interested in game design, the creative process & game mechanics but only a couple of articles or interviews have ever even touched on those subjects in any meaningful way. More often than not they can be filed under "marketing bullshit" of "ramblings of a douchebag"