With the rate of releases on the 3DS eShop, it’s easy for things to fall through the cracks. Most titles get next to no promotion. Space Lift Danger Panic fits into that category, but brings with it surprisingly addictive arcade gameplay.

The game has you tapping the touch screen to open portals to rescue falling people, in a way that’s very reminiscent of the arcade classic Missile Command. At the bottom of the screen are spikes that kill them on impact, and once a certain number of them die you’ve failed. This starts off slow and easy, but can quickly become overwhelming.

The game is split into two modes, Mission and Survival. In Mission mode you play through a series of levels, each featuring a set number and pattern of falling people to rescue. As an extra challenge, you can tap on coins that float down the screen as well, which can be used to buy extra lives that lower the difficulty of these levels, which are almost necessities as the campaign goes on. There’s a story that plays out in text sequences before the levels, but it’s very forgettable.

Survival mode is more akin to old arcade games, where you get three lives and go as long as you can, trying for a high score. The game even includes leaderboards, both for everyone and just friends, something so many games these days leave out, though right now there don’t seem to be many people using them.

The game gets challenging very quickly. The range of motion allowed by using the touch screen is fully exploited, and the speed they come at gets higher and higher. As someone who loves a good high score challenge, I find myself compelled to keep coming back to it to try to do better. It’s easy to get in, play a quick round of it, and get out.

This is the kind of game services like the eShop are built for. It has a simple concept and equally simple gameplay, but to someone who enjoys old-school high score-based game design it could eat up a lot of time.