The Wraith of the Galaxy

The Wraith of the Galaxy is a third-person space shooter from Whale Rock Games that drops you into the cockpit of a fighter ship and asks you to clear out an alien invasion one sector at a time. It’s a small, focused Early Access project rather than a sprawling space sim, and that’s kind of the appeal: you strap in, pick a fight, and see what your weapons can do against mutants and enemy ships scattered across a handful of planets.

How it plays

You fly a customizable spaceship armed with several weapon types, and the core loop is straightforward: engage enemies, dodge incoming fire, and push through space littered with asteroids and hostile aliens who have taken over the sector to run experiments on entire worlds. The controls lean toward a flight-sim feel rather than an arcade shooter, so there’s some weight and momentum to how your ship handles instead of instant point-and-shoot responsiveness. The game is built around a set of missions that take you across different planets, and the visual side leans hard into colorful, stylized space backdrops paired with a soundtrack meant to keep the mood cinematic while you’re weaving through fire.

Who it’s for

This is a good fit if you like bite-sized space combat you can drop into without a long onboarding process, and if you appreciate flight-sim style ship handling over twitchy arcade controls. Fans of casual action games who want something visually pretty to fly around in for a session or two will probably get a kick out of it. It’s also worth a look if you’re into indie space shooters and want to see what a small studio does with the concept. On the other hand, if you’re expecting a deep strategy layer, a big campaign, or the scope of a full-priced space combat game, you should adjust expectations accordingly since this is an Early Access title built around a compact mission set. Players who need a robust multiplayer scene or heavy narrative depth should probably look elsewhere too.

Is it worth grabbing?

For what it is, a lightweight third-person space shooter with a handful of missions, decent visuals, and flight-sim inspired controls, it’s a reasonable thing to have sitting in your library, especially since claiming it costs nothing but a bit of disk space. It’s the kind of game you install for a quiet evening of blowing up asteroids and alien ships rather than something you’ll sink dozens of hours into. If you’re a genre fan who enjoys collecting space shooters, or you just want a casual palate cleanser between bigger games, there’s no real downside to grabbing it. Just go in treating it as a short, atmospheric diversion rather than a full-scale space epic, and you’ll get more out of it.

Quick facts

Genre: Action, Adventure, Casual, Indie, Strategy, Early Access. Developer and publisher: Whale Rock Games. Platform: PC (Steam). Release date: February 15, 2023.