Games Like Void Horizon

The night the stars went out, an armada came out of the dark, led by eight giants. HORIZON SQUADRON is all that is left to meet it.

Void Horizon is a bullet hell with a roguelike spine and a light touch: three stats, one pick after every fight, and a run that ends when your last ship does. Every boss breaks a rule. Every co-pilot brings an ultimate. And when the top-down war gets comfortable, the camera swings behind your ship and the squadron goes on the rails.

Eight bosses that break the rules

TETRA builds walls. OVERSEER hides behind a picket you have to break. PRISM is nearly invisible until it fires. BROODMOTHER lays eggs that hatch if you leave them. MANTIS lunges and vanishes off the edge of the screen. GLACIER turns your handling to ice. HIVE TYRANT never stops its swarm. The VOID MOTHER drags you into her gravity.

Each one performs named, choreographed barrages with a tell, a shape and a way through: built to be read and threaded, never guessed. Between the boss stages, old-school vertical sorties lock your guns forward and scroll the sky.

Fourteen co-pilots, fourteen ultimates

Pick a co-pilot before every run. They ride in your cockpit, call the fight and charge an ultimate you fire when it matters. The world freezes, their portrait slams across the screen, and then:

...and ten more, each with its own painted art.

The pilots

Fourteen ships, fourteen pilots, none of them quiet. SHOWTIME, the TV-star ace. LONGSHOT, the dead-eye marksman. KNUCKLES, the pro wrestler. SIR CLANK, the butler-knight. HOOT, the night-owl sniper. DOUBLE, who are twins. Each hull flies its own signature weapon and one rule of its own: one phases through a sharp reverse, one burns its wake, one digs in and hits harder standing still. Your squadmates are on the radio for every fight, and the bosses answer back.

The rail

Then the camera swings behind your ship. THE RAIL is a full on-rails mode: seven courses, from a city under occupation to past the last stars, each ending on a painted boss. TRIDENT tears the cranes down across the bay. LEVIATHAN feeds on a dead fleet and throws the wrecks at you. The WYRM rises out of the lava behind you. The KRAKEN breaks the ice under your ship.

Your squad flies on your wing, takes your orders and gets into trouble you will have to get them out of. Courses fork, and a secret road takes the whole run somewhere else on the map. Five courses a run, medals to earn, secret roads to find, and SCORE ATTACK to fly any course you have reached on its own. Single player.

Arcade: Classic and Survivor

CLASSIC is a 20-minute horde run across four sectors: stack up to six weapons, evolve them, and when it gets easy, turn on any of ten THREAT rules for a bigger score. SURVIVOR is the long haul: thirty-minute stages that climb until something arrives that cannot be killed, with the campaign's bosses dropping into the horde along the way.

Endless and Boss Rush

ENDLESS loops the journey sector after sector and never stops climbing. Clear the campaign and BOSS RUSH opens: all eight bosses back to back, tougher, with no free refills between fights.

A run worth chasing

Three stats, each doing exactly one thing. An upgrade pick after every fight, from over twenty systems that each change one rule. BLACK MARKET deals that curse your next two stages for a big payout. An OVERCLOCK meter you charge by grazing bullets, then spend to turn enemy fire into gold. Every run condenses into salvage for a deep Workshop, and 147 missions open new weapons, systems, ships, sectors and coats.

Couch co-op

Two pilots, one screen, the same bullets, separate builds, and a co-pilot each. Campaign and Endless, one pilot on mouse and keyboard and one on a controller.

Play your way