Trade your life for sweet upgrades in free shmup Guardian Sphere

(Image credit: Tom Sykes)

Shmups, especially vertically scrolling ones, tend to be extremely difficult, peppering the screen with elaborate waves of bullets, and asking the player to weave between them like a robber entering a laser-strewn bank vault. Guardian Sphere is a little easier, a little less bullet hell, and a perfect way to become acquainted with a slightly daunting genre.

Playable by one or two players (offline), it's a thoroughly traditional shoot-'em-up except in two ways. The first is that there are no high scores, which is admittedly a little odd, and the second is that you can trade in your health to buy upgrades.

The game was made for a recent Ludum Dare (theme: your life is currency), and developers Pixel-Boy and AAA chose to take that theme literally. Your health consists of a number of colourful spheres, dropped by enemies, that deplete Sonic-style, every time you take a hit. But you can also use them to buy a frankly enormous range of upgrades at each of the shops in each scrolling stage, including extra bullets, bigger bullets, homing bullets, and other stuff just as good, but not to do with bullets.

It feels like a roguelike, but without the extreme difficulty, and with less replay value. However, I thoroughly enjoyed blasting my way through the slick, and fully featured Guardian Sphere.

For more great free experiences, check out our roundup of the best free PC games.

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.

Latest in FPS
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Ogryn
Warhammer 40,000: Darktide adds a psychic horde murderzone mode and makes Ogryns even smashier
Starfield's companion robot giving a thumbs-up
Former Bethesda dev who quit Starfield to go solo says it's 'much less stressful as an indie' without daily meetings or 'office politics': it's 'very refreshing to just care about the game'
A crew of prospectors in Wildgate, featuring a robot, a rabbit man, and a small aquatic creature in a combination mech/aquarium.
Blizzard co-founder Mike Morhaime's new company is putting Sea of Thieves-style shenanigans in space with a new crew-based shooter
Team Fortress Spy being shocked
An FPS studio pulled its game from Steam after it got caught linking to malware disguised as a demo, but the dev insists it was actually the victim of a labyrinthine conspiracy
Neighbors Suburban Warfare screenshot a child aims a slingshot at a man from across a cul-de-sac.
A beta of backyard FPS Neighbors: Suburban Warfare is out now, and the balance discussion is hysterical: nerf trash can lids and children
Fragpunk
Somebody finally figured out casual Counter-Strike
Latest in News
An Enshrouded player in a recreation of Erebor from The Lord of the Rings
Kings under the Mountain! 33 Enshrouded players spent 10,000 hours to recreate this iconic location from The Lord of the Rings
A mech awakens.
Mecha Break developer is considering unlocking all mechs following open beta feedback
Lara Croft Unified Art
Tomb Raider developer Crystal Dynamics lays off 17 employees 'to better align our current business needs and the studio's future success'
A long bendy arm stealing money from people in a subway car
'You're a very long arm. You steal things. It's a comedy game,' explains developer of comedy game where you steal things with a very long arm
The heroes are attacked by monsters
Pillars of Eternity is getting turn-based combat to mark its 10th anniversary, and that means PC Gamer editors will soon be arguing about combat mechanics again
Image of Ronaldo from Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves trailer
It doesn't really make sense that soccer star Ronaldo is now a Fatal Fury character, but if you follow the money you can see how it happened