What Jamestown+ is
Jamestown+ is a top-down shoot-em-up set on 17th-century British colonial Mars. You fly a ship through dense waves of enemies and bullet patterns, working through handcrafted levels with lush pixel art behind the action. The story follows Raleigh's fight to protect Britain's last bastion, the Jamestown colony. This is the expanded and remastered edition of Final Form Games' debut title, eight years in the making, with two all-new levels set on Phobos and Deimos, the moons of Mars.
The difficulty range is wide. Newcomers get an approachable way into the shoot-em-up genre, while experienced players get crisp controls and the full-throttle challenge they expect from the genre. The soundtrack and sound effects were remastered for 5.1 surround sound.
Playing it as a group
Jamestown+ is built for 1-4 players in one session, and it scales to whatever number shows up. The key cooperative rule is that you only lose a credit when the whole team is destroyed at once, so having an extra friend along is always a benefit rather than a burden.
Controller support is unusually flexible. The game detects controllers and lets you rebind keys, so a group can mix whatever hardware is on the table — several mice, a mouse plus keyboards, or more unusual devices. Up to four players can use any combination of controller types. Remote Play Together is available, so friends who are not in the same room can join a session.
Ships and loadouts
Several new ships join the roster, each with its own loadout: Treason fires homing missiles, Ghost has a close-range Excalibur and a shadow double, and The Armada adds three configurable characters. Between them, the configurable options give 36 possible weapon loadouts, so each player can shape a ship around how they like to play.
Before you start
Expect a bullet-hell shooter: the screen fills with patterns, and dodging matters as much as shooting. Levels have been rebalanced with layout adjustments and bullet pattern tweaks, plus new background and enemy artwork and a rebuilt interface. Pick a difficulty that suits the least experienced player in the group, since everyone shares the same pool of credits, and settle controller bindings before the first level so nobody is fiddling with keys mid-run.