Bacteria Arcade Edition Review

It seems that most people get sick during these cold winter months with the flu or some other ghastly illness. If only there was a way to protect the healthy cells from the dangerous ones in an effort to avoid illness completely without getting a shot or building up an immune system. Bacteria Arcade Edition uses this approach by letting gamers defend their cells from an alien bacteria attack with spaceships.

When Bacteria Arcade Edition first started, the game immediately sent chills up my spine. The creepy music and the eerie graphics help set the tone. Once the menu screen pops up, players can immediately jump in on the action. Tap on the one-player to switch to two-player simultaneous mode or tap on the level of difficulty to switch between novice, arcade and insane. It’s also possible to tap on the control buttons on the main screen in order to change them up.

The goal is to survive each wave by destroying the enemy bacteria so that they do not steal the only remaining cells on the screen. Players must try to destroy and evade these enemies by using the red button to shoot, the yellow one to speed and the blue one to port to another area on the screen. Gamers move their spaceship with either the virtual joystick or green buttons. It’s essential to survive a wave for 60 seconds, and then players earn another cell to protect along with bonuses and sometimes extra lives.

Things start off slow at first, but then they pick up and get frantic after a few waves. The power-ups that are collected to increase fire power help keep the game from going stale quickly. After playing through a few beginner waves, I noticed the reference to a few classic arcade games like Asteroids, Defender and Pac Man. I liked how the game felt so familiar, yet it was also quite unique.

The game took some getting used to because there isn’t a tutorial so things can be a little confusing and frustrating at first. After I learned how to play, there were a few areas of improvement that I noted that would make it even better like an option to switch the screen to landscape mode, an information screen to help gamers who may get frustrated easily, and an endless mode where gamers can take on a steady wave of enemies to try and last as long as possible.

Despite a few areas of improvement, Bacteria Arcade Edition is still a fun and addictive arcade game. In addition to protecting cells, players work hard on earning the highest score possible. Bacteria Arcade Edition comes with 8 leaderboards to climb and 3 hard achievements to earn. With plenty of intense gaming sessions, this is a retro gem well-worth exploring. Try it out for free first here.