Dread Chase was one of many indie games shown off the inaugural PAX Australia, and is a six-way directional space game based around defending your base from incoming attack against both military and alien threats.
The game is fundamentally based off the navigation system which allows for navigation in 6 directions to tackle enemy threats. This type of navigation also allows for a larger capability to navigate the complex bases. These bases (both your enemies and your own) are complicated structures with narrowing corners and fully destructible environments allowing for more flexibility in how you take out your opponents.
The campaign mode involves well choreographed sequences of increasingly challenging encounters with more and more enemies and enemy classes. Some of these classes include interceptors or more bulkier tanks. Your spacecraft is capable of out foxing the larger classes like the tanks but facing them head-on is suicide.
Dread Chase allows for different ways to tackle the varying bases and attacks, you can either hang back and wait for them to come to you or you can take the offensive with a pre-emptive attack. The former isn’t quite that flexible right now as the build available at PAX didn’t quite have the ability to build fortifications of your own. This was only due to the fact that the game is designed to be fast paced and frenetic and so a build system would compromise your ability to actually take out the incoming craft. However there may be plans to implement such a build system in a multiplayer mode of the game which is not currently available.
Pre-emptively taking bases and enemies out is most likely your best bet as you may get swamped by more craft if you just hang back. To attack these areas it is best to activate stealth mode which will let you move through the areas quietly and by infiltrating you can destroy the power supply of these areas rather than go toe to toe with every interceptor in the base. Stealth mode is the key for this but will be compromised if you run into objects or are spotted by turrets or other enemies.
Dread Chase does have a campaign mode but the story is not ‘cut-scene’ driven but is more about the gameplay of fighting off the pursuing military craft and occasionally the territorial alien bases and as a highly specialized combat pilot you have all the capability to take them on.
Dread Chase has a demo available at dreadchase.com and is currently on Steam Greenlight.