An unique twist on old games?
It is a small game which gives you what it shows you. It is for people who like bullet hell games and want to have a twist on them like a rogue-like progression.
What this game is all about?
This game is fundamentally bullet hell game. You will be focusing on your character and making micro adjustments to your position. You will be memorising projectile patters and dodging them. Everything else is just a twist on old, bullet hell genre. Rogue like elements are fun, but they do not alter core gameplay.This is good, albeit short game. You will soon complete base game and the longevity supposedly comes from repetition. Beating game with other characters, hunting for achievements, better scores, higher difficulty levels, etc.
I only disliked seemingly randomly thrown assets together as game lacks a little bit thematically. For example, in military level boss is a pyramid? Then it is a plane? Bosses generally tend to suffer from multiple stages which neither of them is interesting or difficult. These are just stages pilled upon stages and game even lacks simple coherence. Like: this is military level or this is pirate level as assets are not always consistent.
What I had expected?
I had missed an easier mode for starters and greater focus on rogue like elements. Rogue like
- When I had played this game, I had expected various interesting upgrades which would allow you to play this game differently. However, all upgrades are rather tame. They all are focused on various interactions of your shots. Make them bigger, make them slower in order to scale up in a way which would allow you to fill entire screen and instant kill entire wave in a dozen of seconds. This game has only this kind of interactions.
I was expecting to get regenerating shields. Amour. Stealth. More interesting drones which wouldn’t just be extension of you shooting. Even something as regenerating health is very scarce in this game. In this game you will have 100 ways to augment your attacks, but few powerful combinations to make your character really powerful or interesting.
Easy mode - Game lacks an easy mode. It has a practice mode, however it is so trivial that it is not interesting to play. You essentially have invincibility turned on which is neither interesting or gives you a real practice.
This game needs to start with on easy mode for a new player. An easy mode should be just a normal mode with ballerina pick up enabled by default. The core issue is that this game is unforgiving. It is for people who love playing bullet hell type games. Thus, you will have to beat level after level without making a mistake. For a new player it is difficult and they will make a mistake along the way. Mistakes will accumulate and they will get frustrated. Ballerina gives a player 1 health if they take no damage. It is an easy way to make an easy mode for players to play on as it allows players to make mistakes and learn how to play base game. After player beats an easy mode, a normal game mode will be unlocked which is just how the base game is now.
Is it worthy your time?
This game is what you see. It is designed for people who enjoy bullet hell games and is unforgiving to others. If you know that you like these types of games, it is a good purchase. If you don’t, then it is more of an open question. Lack of an easy mode for people unfamiliar with the genre will cause frustration. Lack of interesting character customisation might feel shallow and game lacks narrative to make levels interesting as they can feel cheap at times.Little things
Here is a list of various small things which could be improved.- Is a giant resource hog. Game uses surprisingly little RAM, but a lot of GPU and CPU resources. The problem resides with having no cap on FPS and thus my hardware max out unity FPS cap of 900 FPS. Game needs to have an option to cap FPS.
- Game has a standard white cursor which stays on a screen when you use keyboard aiming. I would like to just get rid of it in options or hide it when not in use.
- It is little bit annoying and tiresome when all bosses have 3 stages of ever increasing difficulty.
- Game has only 1 health regeneration pick up and that is very situational.
- Game has upgrade tier system which is not very clearly portrayed. Each upgrade has different icon with different kind of stars to show that it is better. It would be nice to see icons with unified scheme of rarity.
- Game waits until last projectile to finish. When you are dealing with boss, it is kind of anti-climatic to deal with remaining spawns.
- Barrels/bombs slow down gameplay significantly by denying you access to part of a map where are a lot of them.
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