Smash Hit
is a physics-based rail shooter developed by Mediocre. In it, you fly through a surreal, seemingly empty dimension and launch small metal balls to break blue crystals (to gain more balls and a Multiball combo) and destroy glass objects that you'd otherwise run into (to avoid losing too many balls).
There exists a variety of rooms and graphic environments, and the level sequences are musically synchronized. A one-time premium upgrade also provides you with more difficulty levels, the ability to continue from checkpoints, and more detailed statistics.
You can download the game on the App Store here.
Smash Hit provides examples of:
- Allegedly Free Game: The premium upgrade is required to access more statistics and difficulty levels.
- Boss Battle: In Mayhem mode, every checkpoint is preceded by one, in which you'll have to hit all of its glass panes to proceed.
- Bribing Your Way to Victory: The premium upgrade allows you to start from checkpoints, which makes high scores easier to obtain.
- Competitive Multiplayer: In Versus mode, two local players can compete to survive the longest in a new set of rooms tailored to both this mode and its cooperative counterpart.
- Continuing is Painful: Downplayed. While ball counts and Multiball combos are preserved at checkpoints, any powerups obtained are not.
- Co-Op Multiplayer: In Co-Op mode, two local players can work together to reach the farthest distance.
- Destructible Projectiles: There exist units that launch glass cubes at you, but throwing balls at the cubes will break them and prevent them from hitting you.
- Difficulty by Acceleration: As you get farther into Endless Mode, each room has more obstacles that you must fly through more quickly.
- Drought Level of Doom: The far reaches of Endless Mode have its obstacles being rushed at incredibly fast, with very few crystals to easily hit, and it being all too easy to pass a crystal or hit something, both of which reset your Multiball.
- Easy-Mode Mockery: Your ball count is capped at 500 in Training mode.
- Endless Game: Following the four rooms after Checkpoint 11 is an infinitely long section of four different rooms that further test your mettle.
- Energy Weapon: Some glass blocks emit rows of hazardous laser beams that vaporize any balls that touch them. Thankfully, breaking the blocks shuts off the lasers.
- Glass Weapon: The Mayhem mode bosses are floating block cannons plated with glass.
- Gravity Screw:
- Certain rooms have gravity reduced — or even nullified entirely.
- While your view of your environment rotates with you, the direction of gravity rotates with such, so your view of "downwards" is always where things fall.
- Hard Levels, Easy Bosses: Mayhem mode has obstacles more complex to remove than in any other mode. However, the bosses share the same simplistic patterns for the most part.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Certain obstacles have you headed for metal parts that cannot break, so you'll have to break glass that they are connected to. Just like the forementioned lasers, you can't just tap the center of the screen once they get close.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels:
- Training
- Classic
- Mayhem
- Interface Screw: Certain rooms have you rotate longitudinally, altering your view of your surroundings.
- More Dakka:
- Using the first powerup you obtain temporarily allows you to rapid-fire balls without losing any.
- In Zen mode, your ball count is always infinite, so you can mash the screen to throw balls even more rapidly at no cost. And if you can hold on to a Multiball combo...
- Musical Spoiler: In Mayhem mode, when you enter a boss room, the boss theme plays with a distinct opening.
- No Plot? No Problem!: Just moving through a bunch of glass panes strung in your path for... some reason.
- No Power, No Color: If a crystal (or Mayhem boss face) is broken and your ball count is resultingly added to for the former, it turns gray.
- Notice This: In Mayhem Mode, unhit boss faces will have both color and a glowing outline to help you find them, even if they're not facing you.
- Power-Up: Three different ones exist in the game, able to act as temporary buffs to you. Up to four can be held at a time, and only the most recently obtained one can be used.
- Rail Shooter: You can't control how you move, so you just have to throw steel balls to knock and break things out of your way.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: As Endless Mode and its Difficulty by Acceleration drag on, the background's color gets more harshly warm.
- Shared Life-Meter: Both players in Co-Op mode share one ball count.
- Shielded Core Boss: Certain Mayhem mode bosses are orbited by floating glass panes that they only lower when they attack.
- Sinister Geometry: Obstacles in the first room after Checkpoint 9 and certain ones in the third room after look like hollow-faced cubes and cacti, respectively.
- Splash Damage: Using the third powerup introduced temporarily eschews any Multiball and allows the balls you throw to create strong explosions that break nearby glass (even if said balls hit indestructible metal surfaces).
- Spread Shot: Downplayed with Multiball. Hitting enough crystals in succession increases the number of balls thrown for each ball expended from your supply. The spread is rather thin, but they make obstacles much easier to remove. Also, there are some times where you can hit multiple different targets with one throw.
- Suspicious Video-Game Generosity: In Mayhem mode, if you see a bunch of crystals essentially in the open immediately after a door, be prepared for a boss.
- Tactical Suicide Boss: Each boss in Mayhem mode alternates between spinning around to expose all of their weak spots and facing forward to shoot several glass cubes at you.
- Time Master: Using the second-introduced powerup temporarily slows your perception of time.
- Under the Sea: The particle effects, lowered gravity, and music of the first room after Checkpoint 5 give off this impression.
