Since about an hour after that post, I've been playing Apocalypse Meow.
I'm opposed to paying for upgrades, but so far every single upgrade has been available to me, if you just play enough. And even if you use up all the ships in your hangar (lives), you get a free ship just by watching an ad...and so far, the ads have crashed quite often and they say, "Your video failed to load. Have a free ship on us, anyway". Granted, you have to play a LOT to upgrade enough to give yourself a fair shot to progress (more so than in other games, I feel)...so it's a slow churn...however, one of the cool things is that not only are there different stages (1, 2, 3, etc), but each stage also has 3 difficulty levels which give higher rewards. So, let's say you get through to Level 6, but you just can't pass it at your ship's weapons levels. Then you can just go back to, say, 3 or 4, and try to beat those more-familiar levels at the higher difficulty to earn enough to beef up your guns, health, etc, before trying to go further.
Plus, I get to blow up cats...I mean...sort of.
I wish there were a larger variety of weapons and more characters/ships. And while it's annoying when it happens, I do love the effect of how things blow up when you hit them with your rockets...instead of just blowing up on the 2D plane, they can fly towards you, and sometimes block your view. Surprisingly immersive. And lastly, I'm not sure about the physics of the space. Somehow, I am flying in a plane that can both collide with the huge space rocks, and also the enemy ships, but the enemy ships seem to fly on an elevated plane because they fly right over the space rocks. :lol: Oh well...can't have it all.
I got it free on Android Underground, but have no idea of it's free on the official store or even if it still is free on AU store.