The Apple Watch remains a connectivity tool more than anything else, putting important information on your wrist that you can choose to address or ignore at a glance. But as it gets more powerful, it’s also slowly becoming a source of entertainment, and it’s now capable of playing some mindless but entertaining games.
James Swiney’s Void-X falls into the category of shoot ’em ups, bullet hells, manic shooters, or whatever you prefer to call games where players are faced with screen after screen of patterned projectiles that need to be deftly navigated in order to take out the baddies. For some, these games provide a genuinely enjoyable challenge, while to others, they’re an endless source of stress that justifies the ‘bullet hell’ description.
Void-X is currently available for iPhones and iPads, and provides a mix of minimalist graphics (or at least as minimal as these types of games can get) and frantic gameplay. To be perfectly honest, I’m not typically a fan of these types of games, but the use of touchscreen controls, with which your finger directly controls your ship, makes Void-X much easier to play than when relying on a joystick or a D-pad. I might say I actually kind of enjoy it, but purists can also play it with a wirelessly connected controller if they prefer.
The best reason to drop $US1.99 ($3) on Void-X is because it also includes a version of the game for the Apple Watch. Because of the diminutive size of the wearable’s touchscreen, this version instead uses the digital crown to control the player’s ship. That means gameplay is limited to up and down movements while your ship constantly fires on its own, but it’s no less satisfying, thanks in part to the non-stop haptic feedback as you move around.
For $US1.99 ($3), it’s definitely worth an impulse purchase for those times when you’re bored out of your mind but can’t be caught poking at your smartphone. Although I recommend it more for those with more recent versions of the Apple Watch and their larger displays. I tested it on my ageing Apple Watch Series 4 and it really put my slowly failing vision to the test.