One thing I’m quite certain is that if a Cantonese-speaking guy were to play the tutorial mission in Alpha Tauri Team’s latest game for the iPhone, Space Touch, he would have muttered “Dim kai kam cheong hei?”. It means why is this so long-winded. This actually points to the type of game Space Touch is, and it happens to be combination between a colour matching game and a shoot-em-up (of the on-rails kind), with a dash of hoard mentality added in.


This schizophrenic mix actually makes things really interesting. The game takes place in a 3D scrolling environment and players start off by piloting their space ship collecting energy orbs and bombs. The former is used to fill up the ship’s energy bar while the later are helpful in a pinch, by which you’ll get into a lot, no thanks to how you are supposed to face off with enemy units.

The shooting starts right after you finish collecting orbs and the good part about this mode is that you just need to concentrate on shooting enemies down, as piloting is no longer a concern. Now here’s the tricky part, your ship has three weapons of different colours, each capable of taking down enemies of the same colour. So you can imagine that there’s plenty of switching going on.


Bombs on the other hand are useful to take out any kind of enemy, regardless of colour. The game features both Game Center and OpenFeint online leader boards. Despite the apparent long-windedness of the tutorial level, Nine Over Ten 9/10 rates Space Touch at a 4 out of 5, for the sheer amount of stuff to shoot down in the game.

The game is available on the iTunes App Store for USD 1.99. Check it out over here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/space-touch-the-touch-shooter/id449855262?mt=8. A review code was provided to Nine Over Ten 9/10 for the purpose of this review.