What Super Bit Blaster XL is
Super Bit Blaster XL is a fast arcade shoot 'em up in the style of 80s coin-op games. You fly a ship that never stops moving: you turn, boost and brake to avoid crashing into a growing number of enemies and obstacles. Your ship is always firing, so the main job is grabbing ammo and power-ups to stay alive as long as you can. Runs are endless score chases, and the coins you collect unlock new ships with different traits — some faster, some shooting faster, some with more shields. Power-ups include Spread Shot, Heat Seekers, Laser and Blast Shot, plus screen-clearing Bombs, Shields and Boost pickups. There is also an alternate Manual Fire mode if you want a different feel from the default always-shooting setup.
Playing together
The game has Co-Op and Vs Mode, so your group can either team up or go at each other. It also supports Remote Play Together, which lets friends join in over a connection rather than needing to be on the same machine. Local Co-Op is on the table too, so a couple of people can share a screen and split the survival run between them. Either way, the shared goal in co-op is holding out against the endless waves and pushing the score as high as the group can manage; in Vs Mode the same ships and power-ups turn into a head-to-head fight.
Before you start
Controls are simple and work with keyboard or gamepad, but this is not a twin-stick shooter — turning and boost/brake are the core of movement, and the developer notes the control scheme was overhauled for responsiveness, with the old scheme still available. Expect a bullet-hell-like arcade difficulty curve: the screen fills up, and survival comes down to reading the crowd of enemies and using pickups at the right moment. Coins carry across runs toward unlocking ships, so a rough attempt still moves you forward. Steam achievements and leaderboards are there if you and your friends want something to compete over, and save files sync through Steam Cloud. The game ships with translations in English, Russian, German, Italian, Portuguese, French, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Japanese and Korean, and each ship has its own chiptune track by Spiff Tune.