Backfire is an arcade action shooter with randomly generated arenas and spawning enemies, available on mobile for Android and iOS.
What at first seems like a basic shooter is in fact packed to the brim with endless fun and variety. Backfire is a brutally difficult game, hence the slogan “Nightmares in the palm of your hand” and a nightmare indeed it is.
In Backfire you play as a small ship cleansing an arcade machine infested with demons, the catch is: your ship only fires backwards ! This instantly cranks up the difficulty to 11 as your brain is suddenly forced to think in reverse, if you want to shoot an enemy, you point away from them, and to catch an enemy fleeing to the right, you have to move your ship left onto the opposite direction, this inverse controls makes the already brutally difficult game even more of a challenge, but it also opens up opportunities as when you are fleeing from faster-moving enemies chasing you, your ship is in optimal position to fire at your pursuers from the behind, so the gameplay actually packs a lot more strategy than meets the eye.
The game has two modes, or rather two arcade machines; the original Backfire, and the Backfire: Purgatory.
In the original Backfire; you play chapters, each with specific themed enemies and bosses, like a Demonic Snake inside what appears to be some sort of carcass, a Spider-Queen in a spiderweb, a Robot inside some sort of a machine, and much more… and as you progress you collect coins from fallen enemies, that you can use between respawns to upgrade your ship with a wide selection of weapons that are necessary to take on tougher levels.
Backfire: Purgatory however, is a wave-based mode, where you play against a mix of enemies from the original game, and upon completing each wave you are given the opportunity to upgrade your ship for practically free and you can take on the higher difficulty enemies in the next wave, this mode is a lot of fun as you get to try out most of the different weapons and abilities without having to save up as much coins as in the original game, and as such i find it more suitable for quickplays when you do not have as much time to play as you would with the original mode, however i find myself enjoying the original mode more as you get to keep every upgrade you purchase, and eventually become a badass unstoppable demon-murdering machine
The visual style is gorgeous, high-quality 2D art with glowing green, cyan and magenta color scheme, and the soundtrack is calm and soothing, that is until you are attacked by enemies or hit a wall and suddenly you get this badass heavy guitar and drums Djent breakdown (Djent: is a kind of heavy metal characterized with heavy downtuned guitars and bass drum beats), so the overall presentation of the game is excellent and mesmerizing and i find myself getting distracted from finishing up this review only to pick up my phone and play one more game of Backfire !
You never knew you wanted to play a game like Backfire, but when you do, you wonder how on earth you’ve never played that game before, and it instantly carves its name in your list of all-time favorite games !
I can highly recommend this game to all kinds of players, casual or hardcore alike, and i rate this title a solid 9/10
Backfire is available on the Google Play Store here , as well as the Apple App here
Special Thanks to Joel Rochon from GRYN SQYD for the review code.