Planet Revenge is like a level-based Flappy Bird in outer space

Yesterday, a major scientific breakthrough was reached as the existence of gravitational waves was confirmed with the announcement by a team of physicists that they had heard and recorded the sound of two black holes colliding a billion light-years away. If that sounds too complex, it’s because it is. But the research that went into the discovery is well worth a read, if a tad (read: very) incomprehensible even to an interested layman like me.

Thankfully, you don’t need a Ph.D. in astrophysics to play this new “gravitational” iOS game that I’m about to recommend. How’s that for a segue, eh?

An out-of-this-world Flappy Bird

The game in question is Planet Revenge from Armor Games, the studio behind Flight!, Detective Grimoire, and other iOS games.

I like to think of Planet Revenge as something of a Flappy Bird in outer space. Like Flappy Bird, Planet Revenge has you tapping to guide the main game character in order to avoid obstacles across a side-scrolling environment.

But unlike Flappy Bird, where you control a bird attempting to fly between rows of pipes à la Super Mario Bros., Planet Revenge has you controlling an alien-occupied UFO as it navigates different worlds. Also unlike Flappy Bird, which is an endless side-scroller, Planet Revenge is a level-based game, challenging you in each level to go from one side of the screen to the other without, well, dying along the way.

Easy to learn, hard to master

So, what do you have to do to not die in Planet Revenge? Well, the game’s controls are easy enough. Just hold and release to change the direction of the the vertical movement of the UFO as it travels from side to side.

What complicates the proceedings a bit is that the levels have varying gravity effects, with the direction of gravity across a certain portion of a level indicated with an arrow. As a result, while in one level you would hold to make the UFO go up and release to make it go down, in another level you would have to do the reverse.

And then there are the different surfaces and obstacles that you must avoid so as not to make the UFO crash and burn. Take a look:

If you can’t see the video embedded above, please click here.

Pick up and play Planet Revenge

In Planet Revenge, you basically have unlimited lives. But every crash you incur is recorded. Your goal, then, is to complete all of the game’s 100 levels across five worlds in as few attempts, that is, with as few crashes, as possible. Should you find a level particularly difficult to get through, you can skip it by watching an ad, but with the caveat that skipping a level adds 50 crashes to your tally.

You can find out how well you’ve been faring by checking out the Game Center leaderboards and achievements.