Are you tired of generic top-down view space shooters? Well, Ray-Hound might possibly be the fix you are looking for.

Ray-Hound is a space shooter created by Hikware Software. Locked inside an arena, you are piloting an extremely fast and agile ship that appears weaponless. While you won’t be firing missiles or bombs to defeat the clusters of turrets that appear inside the arena, you can turn their pink rays against them by emitting an energy field that converts all the rays within a radius around your ship into blue rays. Converted rays are unable to damage you, but can be used to destroy the turret clusters. Maintaining the energy field by depressing the left mouse button does not convert additional rays; instead it makes the nearby blue rays orbit your ship, allowing you to throw back incoming fire at your aggressors.

This design appears easy to play, but due to the game's fast pace and time limit, it is quite the contrary. At the start of the game you are awarded 120 seconds which seem plentiful, but will quickly wither away should you be careless. Getting hit by a ray stops your ship from emitting its energy field for a second or so. This is enough so that the rays you were carrying quickly scatter, also directly removing ten precious seconds off the clock. This game is all about speed and precision. In order to succeed in the later levels, you’ll need to evade showers of rays while delivering tremendous blows in return. The only way to increase your timer is by completing an entire level, which will give you a hefty 35 seconds.

The main goal here is to gain as many points as possible. You are awarded 300 points for destroying an individual turret. In order to score big, you'll need to acquire point multipliers by destroying a lot of turrets at once. Destroying two turrets in one shot multiplies the score of the second turret by two. This means the first turret you destroyed gave you 300 points, and the second, 600. Multipliers double on each additional turret you destroy. Destroying five turrets at once will give you 300 + 600 + 1200 + 2400 + 4800 for a hefty 9300 points.

The game has two advanced techniques that players can learn in order to succeed. The first allows you to bash a friendly ray in the direction of your ship, a technique I still haven’t mastered. It allows you to quickly change the direction of rays before they even begin to orbit your ship, which can save precious milliseconds. The second technique allows you to ram a turret off its cluster. I don’t see the point in doing so, but my guess is that more experienced players will be able to create bigger clusters for themselves in order to score ridiculous combos.

The game’s presentation is pretty good with excellent, smooth graphics and appropriate sound effects. The game unfortunately runs at a locked resolution of 640 x 480, in both full screen or windowed. This means it’s possible it will look very stretched out in full screen or very small in windowed, depending on your screen and desktop resolution. The game’s performance is impeccable and should run on any computer.

Overall, Ray-Hound is a unique experience that shouldn’t be missed by any shooter fans looking for something unique.

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