Galactic Arms Race is a space shooter taking place in the Perimeter, a collection of many star systems awaiting to be explored. The player starts as a fresh recruit in the human Sol Federation Navy with the first goal to cleanse the Cygnus system of hostile forces. There are different friendly races and enemy factions. Opposing the player are various pirates, the alien Xindo, space blobs, and geonoids. The game is divided into star systems with different levels of difficulty accessed via jump gates. Sometimes it’s necessary to travel through several star systems in order to reach the last jump gate towards the destination, but the game doesn’t generally hinder the player’s movement through the galaxy.
The player pilots a single gunship from a bird’s-eye view moving through a 2.5D representation of the universe. In other words, it’s only possible to move on a bi-dimensional axis, and not up or down. Buying a new ship will replace the old one. Besides purchasing new ships, friendly space stations offer other services as well: repairing the ship, installing mods (similar to skills, and include armor bonus and repair rate, weapon cooldown and damage, teleport range etc.), scrapping unwanted guns for credits, mutating guns in the weapon lab, buying an autonomous drone or a neuralium warhead. Almost everything requires credits, which need to be earned by destroying enemies. They may also drop neuralium isotopes of various qualities, from common to artifact, and ship upgrades for various individual parts. When installed on one of the weapon’s three slots, the neuralium isotopes determine the shooting pattern. They are created based on the cgNEAT algorithm, which takes into account the features of isotopes used in the past. Certain isotopes will make the weapon shoot in the wrong direction, and the player will have to change the polarity in order to correct the direction. Unwanted isotopes can be salvaged for neuralium and inferior ship upgrades can be exchanged for credits. Collecting neuralium is useful especially after acquiring the Warhead Launcher, which uses it as fuel to unleash a large-scale explosion.
By defeating enemies, the player can advance through a progression system of 200 levels. Every level-up is rewarded with mod points. They can be used to install ship modifications at a nearby space station. When buying a new gunship, the mod configuration is transferred from the discarded ship, however there is a button which allows the reassignment of all collected points. If the player’s ship is destroyed, it respawns at the nearest friendly station in exchange for a sum of credits.
The single-player component includes the Campaign mode, which is a string of missions tied together by a story, and the Defense mode, where the player must survive as long as possible against consecutive waves of enemies. The multiplayer component features the same galaxy, but up to 32 players can enter it and fight against each other as well as against the AI. It’s also possible to form squadrons unaffected by friendly fire. A star system called The Arena is designed exclusively for PvP action.
