Skill Grid is an endless score-attack, vertical shoot-'em-up, featuring frenetic tactical gameplay and comprising of a variety of different sub-games, boss battles, and in-depth scoring mechanics. You control a spaceship flying above a vertically scrolling field of random hexagonal cells.

The spaceship catches coloured cells with its tip. If a cell is caught, it causes specific effects and possibly awards points. Collecting blue cells results in positive effects, such as an acceleration in your ship's horizontal or vertical movement, a reduction in enemies on screen, an increase to your shield levels or a recharge of your weapons, while the yellow cells will result in adverse effects.

While collecting cells you will have to navigate your way through an army of UFOs, asteroids, missiles and bosses. The gameplay mode switches from time to time depending on whether a particular timer has expired or you have collected a cell that invokes a boss battle.

Your spaceship can shoot beams but not an infinite number of them, and its energy charge decreases by one unit each time it does so. Luckily, the charge increases steadily when the weapon is not being used.

If you are looking for a simple arcade quality shoot-'em-up experience then Skill Grid will not be a game for you as its shooting action is somewhat dull. It's only when you are drawn into a boss battle that there's actually any excitement. The rest of the time, you are actually not compelled to shoot anything at all. The bottom line is that Skill Grid is a cerebral collecting game with some deep tactical elements. There is a lot within Skill Grid and the switching of game modes keeps things interesting but the combination of the two styles of games doesn't really pay off and comes off feeling as a compromise.

Technically, the game looks good, moves at a smooth speed and the backing music and sound effect is sonic candy. It's a reasonable attempt to bring something new to the arcade shooter genre but it doesn't quite get there.