Last updated on January 3rd, 2026 at 01:01 pm
Wavecade – Action Game Review
Wavecade is a Action/Casual game from Andrew Spalato, first launched in 4th January 2023.
It’s rated 9+ and currently has 70+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Wavecade Stand Out
Inspired by classic arcade shooters such as 'Space Invaders' and 'Galaga', Wavecade brings back the original nostalgia feeling to players from arcades, using sleek retro 80's and sci-fi aesthetic.
TIME MANIPULATION:
Bend time at your will by moving up and down the screen. After each wave, the game speeds up a small amount. making the game more challenging on each new wave.
POWERUPS:
You can accumulate multiple powerups at the same time. Collecting the same powerup upgrades it and increases your time with them active.
ABILITIES:
Activate your ability when you are facing near certain destruction to turn the tables of the game. It might be the one thing that saves you from a GAME OVER.
BLOCKS:
Blocks spawn at the top of the playfield and move down the screen. Line up your shots and shoot them for points.
They can come in a variety of types:
Blocks can spawn randomly, in rows, in a single stream, or in a pattern spanning the playfield
HAZARDS:
Hazards can appear at any time and can lose you a life if you happen to hit any of them. They can help destroy blocks if you're agile enough, could be a blessing in disguise.
BOSSES:
Get far enough in Wavecade and you will find yourself in epic encounters with bosses. They will have an arsenal of abilities to GAME OVER you. Learn their patterns and overcome them.
MULTIPLAYER:
Invite or join a friend on Steam and destroy waves of blocks.
Your scores are saved to the leader boards with your names. How long can you stay #1?
VARIETY OF GAME MODES:
Competitive
Relaxed
One-hit KO
No blocks shall pass
Chaos
Quick Game
CUSTOMIZATION:
Personalize your player choose from a selection of ships, colors, skins and your propulsion effect.
This Action game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Wavecade is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 16th June 2025
Recent improvements include:
Cloud save improvement
Bug fixes
Balances
Download & Availability
Wavecade is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Every review you look at is from over a year ago, where the game was $2 and in a very underdeveloped state. Here is our take on the most recent version of the game as of writing this review, which is almost an entirely different game than what it used to be. If you are confused as to what the game is, read this review, but if you are just quickly looking for our opinion, yes, we HIGHLY recommend this. GAMEPLAY First of all, this game is an arcade shooter, but with a more modern twist. The goal of the game is to destroy blocks, enemies, and bosses in waves and increase your score. There are plenty of game modes to try, each with different challenges or changes. The interesting twists to the gameplay is that as you move up and down, the speed of the game slows down or speeds up, like the game superhot. The second biggest aspect is the powerups, which are extremely powerful modifiers to your ship (also could be a crab) that are designed to release dopamine inside your brain. You can stack powerups, and they are all useful. And to wrap up this gameplay summary, the soundtrack is phenomenal, you must play this game with sound. MULTIPLAYER This game has multiplayer, and it is cross platform, too. You can either play on a local network, or create an online lobby to play with others (but as of writing this review, the player base is extremely small). We have played with our friends on an online network, because we couldnt figure out how to use the local one, and it worked very well and it was a blast. This game is both designed for solo and co-op, something other games do a hard job of. PROBLEMS The game is free now, so there are ads and micro transactions. When you lose all your lives (in certain game modes), the game offers you an extra life for an ad, which is a very scummy thing to do, but we dont blame the devs, after you play a game, you are forced to watch a short ad. Overall, the ads arent spammy and ti keep it free, it is the best solution. To remove ads, you have to make any purchase. As of writing this review, you can only buy the purple gem things. They are used to purchase skins and textures to customize your ship, but you can gain these gems just by playing normally, so you arent locked by a paywall. We dont know what the blue coin things are. PLAY THIS GAME IF YOU ARE EVEN CONSIDERING IT.
If you like arcade shooters then Wavecade is for you.
Enjoyed this game at first but updates have made it more buggy and crash prone. And also upset that a bunch of IAPs were added to a premium game. Also, can you please add actual relative touch? This means you move the ship relative to your fingers position not that its always under your finger. There are many other shmups on the App Store that do this correctly. (Like the Phoenix games for example).
This game could not run without being logged into game center for some reason, and every time we were able to get to a playable moment a large command code pop up box appeared on the left of the screen we could not remove. Loss of $.
The latest update doesnt allow us to get past the first screen; it immediately crashes. This is at least a four-star game so Ill adjust the rating once fixed.
Wish we knew what was going on. LOVE this game, but the Title Screen comes up and then the app closes within a few seconds. Sigh.
Has been crashing on iPhone 12 mini for the last couple updates. Please fix.
The game is fun overall. Unfortunately, it consistently crashes on us whenever Im playing for 5 min or more. We hope this issue gets fixed.
Last update and this recent one has not allowed us to play because it immediately crashes.
We really enjoy this game. It has a great layout, simple. The fast/ slow movement gameplay makes for amazing control. The colors and music add to the experience – awesome! Why 2 stars? THE APP KEEPS RANDOMLY CRASHING IN THE MIDDLE OF GAMEPLAY. Ill be up to 3 million, doing great and the app crashes.what the what.
Hey guys would love to play but you gotta give us a way to do so without Game Center. Im just stuck on Signing in to Game Center.
Playing on an iPhone 14 Pro and crashes every time Ive played. Disappointing to pay for something so buggy.
We have an iPhone 14 pro max. This thing has closed out multiple times in the middle of playing. The menus are a mess. Filled with glitchy laggy pop ups. Not worth $3.
Game wont open. Frozen at the photosynthesis warning page. Please refund our money.
The latest update doesnt allow us to get past the first screen; it immediately crashes. This is at least a four-star game so Ill adjust the rating once fixed.
The game crashed when we hit wave 10 :(.
We spent money on this and your just going to shut it down fix this.
Love the game but with every update there is another flaw. Now the craft jumps wherever you put your finger and also puts the craft directly under your finger so you cant see where your moving also speed of time far too drastically reduced when in middle or bottom of screen so when your at top it goes so fast you cant see anything thats coming and you die. Strange concept.
We bought the game almost a month ago to play the multiplayer. So far, we still have yet to be able to match up with any players online. Its always only (1) player online (us!). Ive tried manually selecting regions and still same results. Maybe if the game was cheaper $0.99 or even FREE (with in game purchases available for customizing) they could get a ton more players on the platform and it would grow so much faster. We believe this is an awesome game with great online potential but as it sits, not enough people are buying it and actively playing online. We would easily give this a 5 star rating if we could play JUST ONE online multiplayer game. Honestly, we would have spent more money in-game to customize versus cost to purchase the game itself.
We love arcade-type games, and this is one of our favorites. The music is fantastic and the gameplay is really interesting and satisfying. Chaining power ups and obliterating blocks with these visuals is very beautiful and the customization of the ship is something we havent seen before. For $2, this game is a steal. Im glad this game is still getting updates, and we have one concern regarding mobile controls. If you are right handed, chances are you move the ship with your right hand. But the Nade bombs and other abilities are also on the right side. So in order to press the ability button you have to either cross hands or stop the ship for a second or two. These are both super inconvenient to do, and results with us sometimes neglecting the abilities altogether, which are big parts of gameplay. We suggest adding a option in the settings that can change what side the abilities are on. Thank you so much for not making pay-to-win crap. Continue making stuff like this in the future.
This is a awesome game ,theres a exp system aswell as a level up system. As you level up you unlock different ships,trails,etc.. This game is really fun in our opinion except there are some glitches that may need to be tweaked and fixed a bit ive stumbled across this bug that when Ive made it far into a level/round and we die the Game crashes and we lose all of our progress please fix this devs. :).
The game is addicting, tune is busting (maybe add some extra) customization is there but cannot change how the enemies look like (add skins like aliens or ufos instead of cubes) and more bosses to make it a bit like binding of you know who Update: sadly the online feature is useless, tries so many times on auto and choosing ourselves servers that we thought will have a couple users but even in the US or Asia they are a total desert.
You complete trashed the touch controls AND the auto shoot function. Also the game now crashes and we have an iphone 13 pro max. More the. Enough to handle this game. That new touch control is completely worthless did you even test it before you released the update? If we could request a refund for this pile of junk we would.
Tried using our ps4 controller on our iPad Pro and it works in the menus but when we get into the game we can not move the ship with the analog sticks or the dpad. All other buttons seem to be working just not the movement. Please fix we tried binding our analog stick to movement but nothing happens and we have to restart the game in order to get out of the binding screen. Also kind of strange all of the buttons on the binding screen are all keyboard inputs even though this is a mobile game.
Co op auto sets to Australia for best latency. Theres no way. If you go to settings to change it.. Its hard to figure out how to scroll down. Probably why no one is in the fixed local area of Washington DC. Because no one would possibly play this game from there? Even if you find one person in Australia and see that you arent 1/20 online .. You cant communicate with them and Im not even sure they can join you. Dont waste your money.
Just downloaded it and we can't control the ship hardly at all. This is junk. We want our money back.
Ive played a few different shooters like this. Most you will play are pay 2 win crap. This here is a premium title, has MULTIPLE different game modes to play, no limit on how much you can play. Has CROSSPLAT multiplayer with mobile, switch, pc. Has leaderboards to grind for. Has a leveling up system, at the end of runs you get XP which can level your profile up and unlock new designs and customizations. That leads us to customization. This game offers it! Customize your ship, enemies, sound, abilities, colors etc. Its honestly a blast. It has some bugs but the dev is always on top of it fixing up what needs to be fixed and adding things. Definitely worth a grab if this is a game youd enjoy.
Awesome game, a lot to unlock, great graphics and haptics and even online coop? What a steal.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.9
- Size: 213.45 MB
- iOS: 12.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence
- Developer: Andrew Spalato
Last updated: 16th June 2025 | Genre: Action, Casual | Developer: Andrew Spalato