[Demo live on Xbox One & Steam] Curved Space targets arcade precision

New scoring mechanics and high-skill techniques come to the arcade shooter

Edmonton, Canada — Only By Midnight wants YOU to join the Energy Corps and wrangle some interdimensional spiders in Curved Space. Available for the past few weeks on Xbox One and Steam, the demo has received major updates, squashing bugs (not the alien kind, though) and adjusting game balance based on feedback from its most dedicated players.

The arcade shooter has been tuned and refined to increase the skill ceiling. Among the many changes, precisely timed dashes now reflect enemy attacks, earning points. Lashing together groups of enemies and ramming them begins a melee combo capable of racking up huge scores in the process. The score counter has even had to be extended to accommodate for this, as some players were racking up numbers in the billions with these new techniques. Players are encouraged to try out the new changes for themselves. Only By Midnight are eager to hear feedback, too, to further tailor the game to its point-hungry players.

The demo includes the first act of the full game’s branching Story Mode, putting players in the well-worn boots of an energy miner. Once upon a time, mankind harvested energy from asteroids until the Energy Spiders started pouring in from another dimension. Now people just mine the spiders instead. With guns.

In the demo, players will have to master an assortment of high-powered weapons and special abilities aboard their mining gunship, including a lasso-like energy tether to chain together the skittering invaders and leech their power; this is the wildest rodeo this side of Space Texas.

The full version of Curved Space will launch this fall, and bring a much wider array of enemies to fight, weapons to use and strange space-warping scenarios to explore in its branching and highly replayable Story Mode, along with heaps of gigantic new bosses to fight. The full game also includes an endless Survival Mode, putting a player’s skills to the test in a score-chasing fight to the finish. All of this is accompanied by a pulsing synthwave soundtrack courtesy of FiXT Neon, featuring music from Scandroid, Fury Weekend and 3FORCE.

 

Factsheet:

● 2D twin-stick style shooter action wrapped around gravity-defying warped 3D arenas. 

● Master advanced ship systems. Energy lashes, dash-boosters and Overdrive Mode. 

● A non-linear Story Mode sends players down unpredictable timelines to strange endings. 

● Stylish comic-style cutscenes from Heavy Metal artist Kyle Charles

● Tons of weird and wonderful alien insects to battle, lasso and leech energy from. 

● Face massive multi-stage boss battles in Story and Survival Mode. 

● Over twenty weapons, from laser cannons to magnetic throwing blades. 

 

About Curved Space:

Inspired by twin-stick arcade classics, Curved Space is a dizzying third-person shooter with a twist worthy of a Möbius strip. Players will be fighting against (and harvesting energy from) an assortment of interdimensional creepy-crawlies while navigating the warped surface of space stations and asteroid mining facilities.

 

Curved Space launches this Fall on Xbox One, Steam, Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4. Release date TBA.

Read more about Curved Space on its official website hereXbox One demo page here and Steam store page (with demo) here.

Press assets are available here. For up-to-the-minute updates, see the Curved Space community Discord.

Dominic Tarason

Media Contact, Vicarious PR

About Only By Midnight Ltd

Only By Midnight is owned and operated by a husband and wife team in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. 

Andrew Czarnietzki is the lead developer, functioning as Designer, Programmer, and Artist. Andrew has over 15 years’ experience in the games industry. He is a co-founder of Serious Labs and has shipped 16 serious game titles as Programmer and Lead Designer, including a line of award-winning VR Crane simulators. Only By Midnight represents Andrew applying his expertise from the serious games space towards entertainment for the simple joy and love of making games. 

Jen Laface is part communications and part storyteller. She has over 10 years’ experience as a science fiction and fantasy writer and editor, and served as Publisher’s Assistant of Canada’s longest-running science fiction and fantasy short fiction magazine, On Spec. She is primarily responsible for story, marketing, and quality assurance.