Future:
After 3 years in the making, Fishlabs Studios has delivered a gorgeous galaxy of gaming goodness to the palm of our hands in Galaxy on Fire 2. It’s a hardcore gamer’s game that harkens back to the classic space sim Privateer for the PC and gives us perhaps the deepest mobile game ever offered.

The graphics have a definite WOW factor even on a small screen. The clarity and detail of the space stations, planets, ships and distant galaxies are light years beyond GoF 1 in conveying the beauty of space. This is accomplished without the slightest drop in frame rate even in the fiercest of battles amongst dozens of spacecraft and floating space stuff. The fireworks are stunning.

The space combat hits the sweet spot in balancing difficulty and playability on your mobile device. Although there is a generous target area and auto fire, you still need to lead your swerving target for the best results making the dog fighting challenging and satisfying. With all the explosions, laser blasts and vapor trails, it becomes easy to lose track of your aiming reticule. It would of been nice to be able to change the color of your crosshairs.

The control of your spacecraft is good and can be extensively modified with a multitude of thrusters, drives, weapons, shields and special equipment like repair bots, tractor beams and scanners making GoF 2 a shipbuilders dream. This, in fact, is one of the driving forces behind this multi-faceted outer space sandbox. The desire to strut through the galaxy in the fastest, deadliest ship ever conceived is both compelling and possible.

Each planet has an orbiting space station where you can buy ships, upgrade, accept countless missions, hire controllable wingmen, check your map and navigate to any system or planet in the galaxy. It’s safe to say that no two people will play Galaxy on Fire 2 exactly alike. You can be a trader, mercenary, miner, hero or go pirate hunting and grab their loot. It’s up to you. Of course, you can simply follow the nice storyline which involves a malevolent race that threatens the galaxy, but that would be like eating a cake without enjoying the frosting. One can savor this game for months.


Though early in the year, Fishlabs has crafted a game that will surely be considered for game of the year honors with its top notch sound, music, graphics and game play. Although this may be the case, there are some issues that come to mind. First and foremost being the fact that there are a lot of load screens in this game. In fact, it takes 2-3 minutes to start the game since you have to connect to the Fishlabs server, log in and then load your saved game. This is Fishlab’s attempt to fight piracy and actually turn a profit on all their labor and I don’t blame them. There are also load times during the game whenever you dock at a space station, travel to another planet, or use a jump gate, which makes Galaxy on Fire 2 anything but a quick-playing mobile game. Weather or not this will appeal to the on-the-go mobile gamer is yet to be seen. It appeals to me and I give it 5 stars. There’s really nothing else like it in the mobile galaxy.

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