A top-down shooter with a war story running through it
Space Defender: Frontier Squadron is a twin-stick space shooter where you fly missions for Admiral Voss and Ilse Marin while ARIA, the ship AI, talks to you over the radio mid-fight. The campaign runs 24 story missions across three acts: bring down the Overseer, escort the Armada, then make a choice at the Threshold. Three endings wait at the end of the war, and one of them only opens to pilots who dealt with the pirate captains a certain way. Dialogue and events are scripted and voiced in six languages, so the story plays out during combat rather than between missions.
Outside the story there is a lot of ship-building to do. You have 13 ships and over 60 equipment pieces to fit — lasers, railguns, flak, guided missiles, turrets, shields, generators — and every item you mount changes how the ship flies and fights, since you manage a shared energy pool. A research tree sits alongside mining, salvage, trade, refining and recycling, and there are 15 kinds of contracts with modifiers plus a signature mission in each galaxy. Four difficulty levels, a Veteran mode and 3 save slots let you set the tone.
Playing it with a friend
Local co-op works on one machine: a friend plugs in a second controller and flies as your wingman. The same setup works over the internet through Steam Remote Play Together. You keep the command, they keep the guns. Your wingman slots into the squadron system you already use solo — you can order up to three wingmen to attack, cover you, hold or break, and they answer on the radio.
The squadron matters beyond co-op. Recruit pilots with 20 different traits that change how your ships fight, assign crew to each ship and talk to every member, since their bonuses fly with them. A downed wingman ejects, and you have to recover the rescue pod before it is lost. Pilots you lose for good join the memorial.
What to know before starting
The front moves whether you act or not. In Perseus and Orionis the Drones push stations from threatened to besieged to fallen if nobody defends them, and you can take them back. Pirates have dens in every galaxy, raid stations, ambush freighters and kidnap pilots, with bounties on named lieutenants. Three captains — Kessa Varn, Dorn Halvek and the Mask — have their own story, and you can spare them, enlist them or shoot them down; your choices follow you to the end.
Combat is readable by design: snipers keep distance, minelayers leave traps, carriers launch fighters, jammers scramble missiles, and every attack is announced so you can read it and dodge. A directional dodge helps with that. Dock at Horizon, Hephaistos or Sekhmet to walk into the bar, Command and the shipyard for rumors, small jobs and trust. Planet expeditions send your crew down with their traits setting the odds — rewards, wounds and archives, but also losses that are real. Controls work with full controller support or mouse and keyboard, with English, French, German, Spanish, Russian and Simplified Chinese.