This roguelike twin-stick shooter mixes chaos, telekinetic trickery, and punishing design to deliver a frenetic, satisfying space fight.
Galactic Glitch, developed by Crunchy Leaf Games, an indie studio that thought space shooters needed a crazy gravitational twist. Galactic Glitch doesn’t try to be like the other top-down roguelike shooters out there. Instead, they tried to make their own niche by giving you the ability to grab, throw, and use the environment as a weapon.
It’s a risky move from a studio that hasn’t worked on any big-name games before, and the game feels both familiar and wonderfully strange. This isn’t the same old Nuclear Throne or Enter the Gungeon game set in space. That isn’t it; it’s much stranger and better than that.
You’re not a hero. People don’t even trust you very much. You are a tool in a simulated combat gauntlet that was made and is controlled by a broken AI that really wants to get out. But like any good AI with shady goals, your creator is both shady and charming.
As you grind through the galaxy’s simulated battlegrounds, they offer vague advice and unsettling support. Your goal? Get out of the loop and set your creator free, but it’s clear they’re hiding some important information about what will happen if they do. The story is meant to be simple, but it’s told with just the right amount of style and personality to keep you interested, especially when the AI starts to hide behind its mask.
The main loop is typical roguelike chaos: go into a battle arena (a small, empty bubble in space), kill all the enemies, and then move on to the next one. This structure of “rinse and repeat” looks very simple, but what makes Galactic Glitch fun is how well the tight movement, different upgrades, and, most importantly, the gravity grab work together.
As soon as you spawn, your ship feels quick and responsive, making it easy to dodge bullets and slam into enemies. With each run, you get new weapons, pick up modifiers, and slowly put together a ship. Some ships are bigger and stronger, while others are small and easily broken. Each ship has its own skills and quirks that can make a big difference in how you run.
In between arenas, there are short paths that split off and lead to random events, mini-shops, and upgrades. Sometimes, you’ll run into bosses, which are horrible, screen-filling nightmares that are meant to test your reflexes and see how well your current loadout fits the way you play.
Let’s talk about the fight. At any time, you can press a trigger to magnetically grab any floating object, like an enemy ship, an asteroid, or a lost missile, and throw it at them. That isn’t just a trick. It makes Galactic Glitch better than other games because it’s at the heart of the combat system.
You can grab a missile in the air and throw it back. You can throw an enemy fighter into another one. A mine can be turned into a guided bullet. It’s not just fun, though it is very fun; it also adds a natural layer of physics-based strategy that most roguelikes don’t have.
When to throw a slingshot so that it hits an enemy where they’re weak and sends them flying into a wall? Beautiful. Beating a boss and seeing them eat their own missile barrage? Chef’s kiss. You can always do more damage by hitting enemies in the back or in their weak spots. The throw mechanic lets you create those chances on the fly.
This system gives encounters a huge amount of depth and variety, but it can also be annoying at times. Sometimes, the chaos of things flying around the screen is too much to handle, and it’s easy to lose track of what’s going on. You don’t have much time to make mistakes in the beginning when your ship isn’t very strong, so some runs can feel very short if you make one mistake.
There is a real sense of punishment in Galactic Glitch. If you get hit hard in one area, you might bleed out in the next few. Healing happens at random, in small amounts, and sometimes not at all. The whole thing is a roguelike: you die from time to time because you messed up, and sometimes because the game didn’t give you a way back.
The way you get upgrades is also a little off. The rate at which you can get new weapons or skills starts to slow down after a few successful runs. The slowdown in the middle of the game can make runs feel a bit repetitive, but the main combat is still fun enough to keep going.
Galactic Glitch doesn’t use the usual ways to earn XP. Instead, most of your progress comes from finishing runs, staying alive longer, and earning in-game currency to get new ships or modifiers. Some modifiers make your defenses better, while others change how you grab things, like making a shield while you hold something or copying missiles you’ve grabbed.
The unlock system does make you want to play for a long time, but because RNG is so important, there are times when you may feel like you’re stuck. But when the upgrades work, they really work, and you’ll feel like an unstoppable force of physics-based destruction.
Galactic Glitch looks great because it has a sleek, vector-inspired style that goes well with its sci-fi setting. Each “bubble” is a combat area that floats in the air, so the environments are simple, but they’re always clear and easy to read. The ship designs are clear and sharp, and the screen is often filled with glowing particles, bullets, and satisfying explosions.
It’s easy to see enemy silhouettes at a glance, which is very helpful when a lot of things are coming at you at once. However, visual clutter can be a problem during more chaotic firefights, especially when a lot of objects and projectiles are moving quickly across the arena.
Galactic Glitch has a crazy pace, and the sound design backs it up with a heavy electronic soundtrack and sound effects. When you grab and throw something, it feels heavy, and it sounds good when it hits an enemy. There is a lot of noise and vibration from lasers, missiles, and explosions.
The voice acting for the AI that doesn’t work right isn’t great, but it does a good job of fitting the story’s mysterious and morally murky tone. Every line from the AI sounds a little off like it’s trying too hard to sound helpful. There’s a mix of dread and dry humor in them.
At first glance, Galactic Glitch may seem like just another twin-stick space shooter, but the grab-and-throw system makes it unique, setting it apart. With a story about an AI that is trying to escape a prison of code, every run is a beautiful mess of bullets, slingshotted debris, and quick-twitch dodging. It is true that the difficulty curve is steep.
Yes, the pace of the upgrades does need to be slowed down. Also, yes, Galactic Glitch does kick you when you’re down. But Galactic Glitch is well worth the loop if you like to beat games and watch chaos happen in style. You don’t just have to dodge and shoot in this roguelike; you have to use chaos as a weapon. It’s also hard to stop throwing enemies at each other, like in a telekinetic space battler.
