Console: PC
Possible timeframe: 2000-2006 (I know that's huge, but I'm still working on it)
Source: I want to say it was a demo of some sort, I feel like it was on one of those you could get from staples that came with like 100 PC game demos. But it could have also come on a demo disc that came with an actual game that I bought like Age of Empires or something.
Type: I honestly can't remember wether it was vertical or horizontal, I'm leaning more toward vertical.
Graphics: Pretty sure these were 2D but not super old school, I want to say it had side borders with info displayed there, on the left were different orbs that showed the weapons you could use or something like that.
Sound: This is what really sticks out, I can almost hear the music now. The music and sound FX were not like from an arcade or retro console, they were more up to date and very well done.
Gameplay: I'm pretty sure that you could get upgrades between levels. from what I remember you fought aliens, or some sort of hybrid of ships infected with aliens. There was a lot of purple and red. I wanna say that they shot out big orbs that spun or something like that. I remember there being bosses as well.
I've searched multiple databases and watched hours of youtube videos, now I'm coming to you guys to see if anyone else played the game and remembers it. I remember playing other games like worms, serious sam, warcraft 2 and several others.
I'll be very responsive here as I'm stuck home with Covid and on the search
closest art style I can find is a much more recent game called Axiom Verge which is a metriodvania type game but here is the art style that I kinda remember my mystery game looking like:
