Last updated on February 6th, 2026 at 09:50 pm
Hectic Space – Action Game Review
Hectic Space is a Action/Casual/Entertainment game from James Swiney, first launched in 30th March 2014.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 18+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Hectic Space Stand Out
"Hectic Space makes blasting aliens feel as good as blasting phat techno beatz" – 4/5 148Apps.com
"Hectic Space is a charming little game that captures the craziness and fun of old arcade titles" – 5/5 cultofmac.com
Hectic Space is now Premium
No more ads, no more inapp-purchase. Just one small price to enjoy hectic gaming.
Watch enemies shatter into glorious pixels in this intense retro style arcade shooter.
Collect insane power ups, reflect enemy bullets with shields and make sure you keep your combo going!
Random enemy patterns keep things fresh, along side a pumping arcade soundtrack.
Easy touch control for precise movement.
This Action game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Hectic Space is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 6th June 2024
Recent improvements include:
Performance improvements and bug fixes.
Download & Availability
Hectic Space 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:
Next to Galaga…. THIS IS THE SECOND BEST GAME IN ALL OF EXISTENCE. FIGHT ME IF YOU THINK OTHERWISE BECAUSE YOURE WRONG.
We like this game, but have a hand injury on our left hand. The only way we can play now is to turn on the rotation lock, and then flip the phone, and control with our hand on the right. It is playable, but it would be nice if there were a menu option to reverse the orientation, so scores and whatnot were not upside-down. Any chance of that? Thanks.
This is the perfect 1980s retro arcade bowling alley skating rink arcade space shooter this is great this is this is perfect we don't know what else to say install it.
This app is easily our favorite game. It's simple, easy, fun, and timeless… It's not addicting and won't eat all your time but never gets old … We got it about a year ago and still enjoy it as much as when we first got it.
We love coming back to this game once in a while. Every time we do, we play it over and over again because it's simplistic, fun, fast-paced and utterly challenging.
Such a great game. If you liked Space Invaders : This is the more charm filled version. A must for any fan of 80's type games.
Not sure where our original review went but we're glad that a couple of our suggestions were implemented (piercing on vertical/spinner shot). Now it seems that cluster bomb is the most underwhelming powerup. It's the powerup on which we most frequently lose our combo. A slight tweak to make the first bomb shot guarantee a one shot kill on the lowest invaders would vastly improve it's reliability. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. We have witnessed a cluster bomb in slow motion colliding with a heart shaped invader only to see the invader survive and our cluster bomb disappear. There are still times where the invulnerability fails. We're not sure what the problem with that is. And let's be real here, nobody actually plays this game sideways. There needs to be an option to allow portrait orientation. A notification on landscape blocks half the screen whereas if portrait orientation was being used, a notification wouldn't block anything.
So simplistic yet action-packed and well balanced. Each game is fast and furious and impossible to not hit 'replay' and keep going. Update!! The game starts becoming unresponsive, the shield sometimes doesn't work, and some of the weapons start acting up, especially on higher scores.
We're starting the game and we playing and focusing but all of a sudden our screen goes black for like 5 seconds and then they have an ad pop up in the middle of the gameplay.
Works great and so much fun. We sprang for the 99 to get rid of the misshapen ads and no 'x' visible.
We would like to play this type of action and gove us lots of din.
This game heavily reminded us of Galaga (which is good) but with a more retro twist with the different power stars and difficulty. Really a well laid out format and awesome music! Our only complaint is that the advertisement pops up at inconvenient times (sometimes when you just started the game), but it's nothing too major. Overall it's an excellent game and we'd totally recommend playing it.
All we want is a pause button. PLEASE.
Oh our goodness am we addicted to this game. Best way to describe it is a horizontal Space Invaders (with lots more ammo). This satisfies the casual retro gamer in us better than anything else on our iPad right now. Awesome job.
Very fun, fast, and addicting. If we could suggest something it would be maybe more customization or upgrades, but other than that this game is awesome.
Really love this app really should be more popular out their on the app store.
It's wonderful, we rarely review apps but this one is just really great. A great way to burn time. Edit: Love the new features and our score is over 600,000 Woo.
We don't see how this doesn't have more reviews. Awesome game! We play it often enough so that we don't have to be bothered for a review. We came her on our own. Worth the download and review.
This is a fun game and a perfect time waster. Even better after the last update. Thanks to the developer for adding the 1 second if invincibility after being hit. Get the game. You'll like it.
This app is a great arcade shooter.
Thank you for adding such a wonderful game to the App Store, it's just pure joy.
Super addicting, lots of fun. Great style and love the music. For the most part, loved the last upgrade. Except the vertical shot it's a combo-killing disappointment, especially when you get it several times in a row. Consider making it stronger, right now it is too weak.
So we were playing and has four lives. We died and lost instantly With one enemy attack. We really consider the respawn time should be just a little bit longer, (.8 seconds), so that even four lives won't be drained down to game over. Thank you for reading! :) -Jordan.
Charge 99 cents, get rid of ads, and then you'll get five stars. Because game itself is awesome. We're deleting it now though thanks to pop ups.
WTH?! Best ever game we played daily and you 1. Hot rid of shields, 2. Screwed up the music with some boring loop and other weird changes that do NOT sound as sick as the original, 3. NO AUTO ROTATIONAL ANYMORE.
We still died moving fast when we had the green shield on.
Needs more enemy types, less on screen, and more power ups. ALSO, GET A PAUSE BUTTON THAT SLOWS DOWN THE GAME SO THAT WHEN YOU RESUME SO IT WORKS OUT SMOOTHLY.
Good classic and awesome game. ^^.
Awesome . Just next update pleas do more weapons :).
Mesmerizing and slightly addicting.
Some people complain about not having different ships and leveling, but that's new age stuff, this is classic. Absolutely great game! We would GLADLY pay if it meant no ads. Other than that we would only complain about the increasingly steep difficulty curve as the game progresses, this is not enough however, to deserve any less than 5 stars. Edit: "we would GLADLY pay if it meant no ads." ->"we DID GLADLY pay for no ads!" we didn't read the update news so we were so confused when we heard the rapid fire sound, but didn't see the rapid fire bullets flying out. Then we realized we were using a new weapon and our face lit up and we got all excited XD.
This game is so fun and we can't stop playing its so good.
The power ups need to last a lil bit longer.
This game is a great game! But we would like leaderboard and multiplayer! That would be great.
Pretty amazing game. Such addicting but adds get in the way while playing.
Finally. The game's downloaded. We tap the game for the first time, and the letters loom ominously in front of us. HECTIC SPACE we tap the screen, and instantly us and our green ship are hurtling through the stars. We see a purple alien in the distance. As we near him, he shoots two deadly balls of red…both aimed well above and below us. We fire at him, as he has proven the rumours to be true. Their kind is not to be trusted. We unleash a flurry of green beams at him, he is vanquished quickly. But behind him come many more of his kind. We expertly take them out, and spot a green box floating in the distance. As we ram into it, we can feel pure energy pulse through our ship and our body. Rapid Fire. Havoc is wreaked as we fire twice the bullets at three times the speed…but the aliens' allies have arrived. The speeding kamikaze ships are difficult to take out, so we simply avoid them. But the Twins bear down on us, both shooting faster than we can… We see another green box. Thank God. Cluster Bomb. We grenade our way past the Twins and destroy all remaining purple aliens in our path to who-knows-where. We spy a blue box, floating in the vast void. We collide with it as our world changes completely. We are unaffected; our ship moves like normal. Yet all around, the enemies are…almost frozen. It's like they're moving through Jell-O…we can't believe it…we wipe them out with insane amounts of ease. Yet bearing down on us in the Reaper, who fires sheer walls of instant, unholy Death. We have sustained two hits…yet we must fight on. We land one hit on him, yet as we're escaping to the north the Death takes us. We stood no chance. We scored 18,750. "Not bad," we say as we click the button, yet again seeing the letters. HECTIC SPACE.
Love playing this but if u could flip the screen so u could use ur right hand we'd like it so much more, not a lefty.
It's a great game, but we kind of find it unfair the fact we could gain 6 hearts & lose them all with in seconds. We think there should be blink time where you can't be hurt. Thanks for reading.
Other than the red dots, which are hard to see, and end most games prematurely, it's a cool game with potential. Reminds us a little of Defender. Some kind of levels, or bosses, or something along those lines would also add to long term playability.
Super fun but it gets boring after a while.Add some upgrades and power ups.
Needs "pew pew" sound effects (; – Taylor and Whitney.
Whenever there are a lot of enemies, the game gets laggy to the point where we can't even see what we're doing. The screen becomes jumpy and we run into red dots that weren't even there before. Fix and we'll rate more since we can't get a score higher than 20 thousand.
Shield doesn't work properly when moving too quickly (you can "teleport" into enemies/bullets). No invulnerability frames after getting hit, so a cluster of shots can kill you instantly. Extremely luck based for pickups/etc. Just overall mediocre design and programming.
This game is amazing in singleplayer, but a multiplayer would make this game that much more amazing. Two players Bluetooth or game center would be fine, please think about it.
Reminds us of a classic 90's game. Amazing.
This game is awesome! Reminds us of our childhood games :).
We personally love this game. It has a fantastic soundtrack, great art, smooth gameplay and is an all around fun game. Our major problems with the game, though, are tied to gameplay. The game is less hard and more punishing. Any game with bullet hell aspects or enemies that all can deal combat damage should have a period of damage immunity and a clear sign of taking damage, neither of which this game really has. Our second major problem with the game pertains to the power up system. While the power ups are well executed, there are some that are near useless, broken, or simply don't work sometimes. Rebound is a power up that is better in its ideals rather in function. Every time we get it it hardly does anything useful except for the spread shot and often is extremely confusing if there is an abundance of enemies on screen. We found ourselves actively avoiding the power up just on that premiss. Now the shield power up… It's great, well designed and doesn't show up enough to make it broken, but sometimes… It just dOSEN'T WORK. We have died numerous times with the shield and it drives us insane! If this is a purposeful feature that's bad and misleading design. If not? Fix it! We imagine it wouldn't be too hard (not saying any of designing a game is easy) but REALLY. Not to leave it on a bad note, but that's just about it. We lived this game, would recommend 100% just try and keep those things in mind developer(s).
Hope you plan on adding more content, maybe power upgrades, that would be sweet.
This game is awesome. But u guys should add a pause button.
This game is so awesome we can't stop playing.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.9
- Size: 34.66 MB
- iOS: 13.1 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: James Swiney
Last updated: 6th June 2024 | Genre: Action, Casual | Developer: James Swiney