Its science fiction story is told in anime style comic strips: a black hole near a human colony has collapsed, many colonists were able to survive in rescue capsules and are now floating in space. As the pilot of the so-called Quarp Jet, the player sets off to save these survivors. His ship features unique teleportation technology: pushing and holding a button brings up a crosshair on-screen, which can be placed on any spot unoccupied by level geometry, releasing the button instantly teleports the Quarp Jet to the desired location. Using this technique is absolutely necessary, as you may be able to regulate the speed while flying through asteroid belts and huge space stations, but you can never entirely stop your ship once you've started a level. Since many routes lead you into dead ends, you would inevitably crash into walls or other obstacles.
In the first few of overall 50 levels you'll learn how to use this ability with pleasantly direct controls that mostly work well, at least with a gamepad (haven't tried mouse and keyboard), although aiming the teleports can be tricky at times. Soon you will come across force fields that destroy the ship immediately on impact, but which can be deactivated if you disable the corresponding generators in the correct order by dropping bombs on them. This requires some thought and skillful use of freely placeable checkpoints, between which the Quarp Jet can teleport back and forth. Careful exploration and memorization of the many intricate level sections is essential for eliminating force fields and finding all the survivors.
Due to its clever level design, Velocity Ultra is almost more of a puzzler than a shooter. However, many shoot-outs with extraterrestrial looters loosen up gameplay and make for a well-balanced experience. Only in the last third of the game, shooting sections become a real challenge and the puzzles get a bit more complex towards the end. But they can always be solved without bigger problems with just a little patience. Graphically, the game is reminiscent of classic space shooters from 16-bit times with a slight comic book style, but generally its visuals are rather unspectacular and lacking in variety. The game can feel a bit monotonous after its first half, as there is hardly anything new to discover, but the slowly growing level of difficulty keeps the sci-fi action interesting up until the finale. I also enjoyed the chiptune-heavy techno soundtrack a lot, which is also available on Steam and is a perfect fit for the action (and is worth listening to on its own). After seven to eight hours, experienced players should see the credits rolling, but if they're inclined to speed running and obtaining all the gold medals, too, it will take much longer.