Tester Phase One

Overview

Tester Phase One (also known as テスターフェイズワン(TESTER PHASE ONE) is a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up, released as a freeware PC game, and then later released on the Xbox Live Indie Games marketplace for 80 Microsoft points (the equivalent of $1.00 USD). Tester Phase One was developed by Alpha Secret Base, a Japanese developer behind several well-received indie games on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The game is a traditional scrolling shoot-em-up, featuring a "reflect" mechanic, dozens of waves, and in-game achievements.

Gameplay

In many ways, Tester Phase One is a fairly standard vertically scrolling shoot-em-up. The player controls a small ship, avoiding enemies and their lasers, while simultaneously returning fire. Accumulating a certain amount of points progresses the player a wave, with checkpoints at every ten waves. Players are able to select any wave that has already been completed, attempting to defeat all of the game's waves.

The distinguishing feature of Tester Phase One is the ability to reflect bullets back at enemies. A meter at the bottom of the screen indicates the current charge of the reflect ability, allowing the player to use it every time the meter is full. Players can either set this reflect to be automatically used (when the player is near to an enemy laser), or manually used (by pressing the X button). The reflect feature is an integral part of staying alive in later waves.

Tester Phase One also has in-game achievements, for a variety of different accomplishments. There are typical ones, such as attaining a certain score, activating reflect a set amount of time, making progress in the waves, etc., but there are others that require the player to die very quickly, die without firing a single shot, or last for a certain amount of time without firing any lasers. There are around 50 achievements for the player to unlock, many of which contain Broken English or unintentional misspellings.