The universe has a strange way of bringing balance to itself. When Daisuke Amaya released Cave Story for free on the PC back in 2004, it slowly became a big hit (for an indie game, at least) but he didn’t see a dime from it. Years later, he was given the opportunity to port the game to the Nintendo Wii, DS and a handful of other platforms, thus restoring money to his bank account and order to the world. Now a similar scenario seems to be unfolding for an addictive little indie game called Super Crate Box.

Originally released as a free PC download by Dutch dev duo Vlambeer in 2010, the game garnered critical acclaim but little to no financial compensation. The next year, Super Crate Box and their second game Radical Fishing were both essentially ripped off and ported to iOS by someone else without their permission. Once again, they didn’t see any of the profits. Finally this week the official version of Super Crate Box has arrived in the App Store and justice is about to be served. The game already appears to be selling like hot… uh… crates.

I had to download it myself in order to see what all the fuss was about. If you ask me, it’s pretty clear that Super Crate Box has now found its proper home on a mobile device as it is a frantic arcade shooter that can be played in short 30 second intervals. It is almost like a cross between Donkey Kong and Smash TV, with an arsenal of randomly swapping weapons to keep things interesting. The game gets hard very quickly, and the virtual controls can be frustrating. But it’s so easy to just fire up one more game that, for the moment at least, I simply can’t stop playing it.

Super Crate Box is available now on the App Store for $0.99