My second Star Citadel gallery. You can see a lot of similarities, plus some differences from the original Star Castle (more particles - but then, I have a lot more computing power at my disposal, even on iOS and Android devices).
Note that Star Citadel has two variants: a modern version, from which these screenshots are taken, and a classic version, which is designed to play as much like the original Star Castle as possible.
Click on the images to see larger versions.
Here we are on a later level. You can see that we've done a pretty good job of blasting our way through the shields, but the cannon is still alive, and now we have mines actively chasing us. Still the cannon is definitely vulnerable so we're sweeping in to attack
Surprisingly the cannon has survived, and has fired back, so we need to get out of here. The problem here is that whilst we've been doing a lot of shooting, most of our shots appear to have gone wild.
Still, it looks like one lucky shot has got through. The cannon explodes spectacularly, and you can see the mine on the right detonating as well. One difference between Star Citadel and the original Star Castle is that, in the modern variant of the game at least, when the cannon is destroyed, the mines can still survive for a few seconds longer, so you need to watch out for them.
Still, on this occasion the last mine has succumbed and we're out of danger. Note the large, spreading, explosion of particles from the cannon. I really did want it to feel like you're in the middle of a fireworks display. Also note the energy projectile, which doesn't die along with the cannon.
Here the cannong hasn't even rematerialized for the next level and I'm already flying in for an attack. I want to lay as much fire as possible on it as quickly as possible to do as much damage as I can to its shields straight away.
Here the cannon is materializing and it's already fired at me. There's a very brief moment where it's shiels aren't yet up when it can fire if it's pointing in exactly the right direction, so be careful at the start of levels. Another difference from the original Star Castle that this highlights is that in the modern variant of Star Citadel you can fire more than three shots at a time; the classic variant limits you to a maximum of three shots at a time, as per the arcade original.
The cannon continues to materialize and expand but, for some reason, I'm just sitting there and have stopped shooting at it. Goodness knows why because if I don't move that energy projectile will have me.
Still basically sitting there, but I've just started to make a move. Maybe I was waiting to see how much damage all that shooting had done. Sadly, the answer is not much.
Well I've managed to get out of the way just in the nick of time here. That energy weapon scored a pretty close shave on me.
Still, after the dodge, I've scythed in for another attack and am, well, quite a bit of wild firing (note the shots flying off to the right) and really only doing damage to the outer shield ring, but I supposed you have to start somewhere.
Here we can see just how ineffective my last attack run really was. Note that, as per the Star Castle arcade game and Vectrex video game, shield segments get brighter when they've been damaged by fire from my ship. On early levels each segment takes two shots to destory, but this increases on higher levels.
This is a bit more like it. I'm heading directly at the cannon, and all my shots are either dead on target, or close to, and should do some solid damage to the shields.