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A game with bullet hell patterns that doesn't play like a shooting game. Instead of being able to freely move your character, your character just moves in a circle continuously. Your way of dodging incoming fire is by changing the character's direction with a button press. You can also slow down time, slow down your own movement speed, slash nearby enemies or aim and fire at them. But dodging by changing direction is your primary focus. This control scheme will seem awkward at first but it does not take long to get used to it.

The game warns you that it's designed to be frustrating. I personally didn't find it frustrating at all, mostly because there is no real punishment for getting hit. Every chapter has a lot of checkpoints and the only penalty for getting hit (that I'm aware of) is your score multiplier getting reduced and having to restart from that very recent checkpoint.

As far as I can tell, all patterns (or at least the overwhelming majority) are static. So, your job on every pattern is to learn and figure out a path, then figure out how to guide your character along that path. If you go for score, you'll want to have them all memorized to increase your score multiplier.

I thought a lot of the patterns were pretty well designed. The ones that bothered me were the ones where you had to deal with singular bullets rather than lines of bullets because it was really difficult to discern a way to dodge them with the control scheme you're given.

However, I'm not kidding when I say that a chapter has a lot of checkpoints. It was a bit too many for my taste at times for a single chapter. Especially if I was having trouble learning a few of the patterns, it would take quite a while to get through it. Luckily, you can quit out of a chapter and continue it later.

At the time of writing, the game has two difficulty modes. Spoiler alert: Easy mode isn't real and instead opens up a message telling you to be more confident and to pick a higher difficulty instead (very based!). A third difficulty which is harder is said to be added in the future. I'm mildly worried how hard it will be because the higher difficulty that already exists is already pretty difficult at times, even when you know what to do.

Silly side note but I actually find it worth mentioning: I enjoy the fun and enthusiastic vibes I get from the dev team in the interactions I'm seeing. Occasionally, you can even see silly pictures of them briefly pop up during a Game Over.

This game has been bothering me for a while so I decided I should just recommend against it and I'll try to keep it short and simple.

First of all, the obvious: Just like with Raging Blasters, a graphically upgraded version of this game will be released on the Nintendo Switch. The Steam version does not benefit from this upgrade, so that in itself is already enough reason to at least not recommend purchasing the Steam version.

For survival play, Moon Dancer would be considered pretty easy by STG standards, with some additional enemies being added on higher difficulties, among other more minor changes.

The score play of Arcade mode is where my main complaints come from. It's simply neither fun nor truly rewarding in terms of the amount of points you get. You can even see on the online leaderboard just how little difference there is between all the clear scores.

In order to increase and maintain your chain you have to continuously hit enemies with your lock-on lasers before the meter depletes (which happens very, very quickly). It can be quite risky as it will require you to be close to enemies to even activate the lock-on. The problem with this is that there is barely any pay-off for this system. The chain multiplies the amount of points you get from defeated enemies but only very, VERY slightly.

You also accumulate crystals which you collect during the course of the stage. These only give you points at the end of stage bonus. If you die you get set back to your most recent checkpoint with the amount of score you had at that point but your crystal count gets reset to 0. And the points you lose due to the crystal counter being reset is higher than the meager amount of points you may get through chaining.

Ultimately, the chaining system is simply the very last thing you should be bothering with and not before you've already mastered the game. Combine this with the fact that there also is no Practice mode with which you could properly practice later stages and you're simply left with the arcade mode not feeling like it's worth bothering to score.

However, if you're a score player the Caravan mode should absolutely appeal to you as it requires you to speed kill enemies for more waves rather than just use the aforementioned chaining system.

The sprites and music are what you see and hear in the trailer. Not very good imo but still passable perhaps.

However, the stage design is very plain.
Certain enemy types get reused extremely often throughout all stages and their bullet patterns are rather generic.
There's no proper flow throughout most of the stages. Instead, most stage gameplay consists of waves of enemies that appear in specified intervals. However, the intervals are often so great that destroying all enemies of one wave immediately may result in a lot of downtime until the next wave appears, rather than spawning additional enemies. I understand that that's most likely designed around forcing you to keep certain waves alive longer so the chain doesn't break but I'm sure that could've been solved much better. Ultimately, I did not enjoy trying to memorize this game as most of it isn't very memorable.

The characters are not well balanced. Winter (the woman) is rather underpowered while Summer (the man) is very overpowered. The leaderboard does not seem to have a filter for characters.

On the positive side, the game has a practice mode, a story mode with tutorials and an instant restart feature.

After finally replaying Outlast 2 once again, I can't help but say that I just don't like the game. It's technically superior to Outlast 1 but that's about it. The gameplay and story are all over the place.

Without going into too much detail, the main protagonist and all the other characters/hostiles are frequently subjected to some sort of light that causes flashbacks and changes the way the world is percieved over time. The main story is constantly interrupted by flashback sequences to a traumatic past that are only related to the current events by the fact that religion was involved in some way. Once these sequences end, the character is in a new location while the player has no idea how he ended up there.

It may have been acceptable if this happened less frequently but the real issue I have is this: The light itself is an integral part of the story but it stays completely unaddressed apart from one hidden document. The most important part about the area the game plays in remains unresolved and basically gets ignored. And all the other events that occur during the course of the game basically felt like it simply went through a checklist of religious horror rather than coherent story-telling.

The last update of the game removed at least 3 chase sequences of the game, leaving entire areas without purpose that were solely designed to be run through while being pursued. I simply do not understand what possible reasoning could have been behind these changes.

The few sections that revolve around more than just running also feel like they weren't thought through well. Using the hiding mechanic (lockers/beds) is almost always simply a waste of time unless required.

That said, I hope Red Barrel's next game will regain my interest in the Outlast series. I'd love to see it resurface again.

My initial experience with Jamestown was a bit rough. The greatest issue of the game is that most of its wide variety of ships are not viable for solo play on higher difficulties.
The wide aspect ratio for a vertically scrolling game puts most ships at a great disadvantage as they simply can not take out enough enemies before being overwhelmed and move too slowly.
However, there is one ship that is fun, fast and viable for everything in this game: The Treason ship.
Thanks to that ship, I have spent a lot of time during the last year grinding the highest difficulty and came to truly appreciate all the hard work put into Jamestown and Jamestown+.

A lot of detail is put into the stage design as each stage has a completely unique set of enemies and boss.
Some of these enemies are worth more points and drop more items if special requirements are fulfilled while destroying them.
The gorgeous art and music strongly contribute to all the flavor.

The game was designed around being played in co-op. It doesn't offer online play but if you get the chance to play locally with friends, you're in for a good time.
Co-op gameplay requires you to watch out for your allies. Either by protecting them with your Vaunt or collecting revival items to revive fallen players.
Enemies have more health depending on the player count and if you're the only player left, the stakes can get very high. It's a very fun dynamic.

The scoring system is simple but engaging: Maintain your Vaunt for as long as you can by continuously collecting items and fulfil the special requirements of enemies.
If you play co-op: Have every other member activate their Vaunt to increase the multiplier as your Vaunt runs out and cash in on a lot of score.
You can cancel a Vaunt manually for invincibility frames but it will half the Vaunt bonus.

Sadly, it seems that Final Form is not operating actively anymore under that name and the members have moved on to other work. As a result, this game does not actually appear to be supported right now either.
If you wish to learn more about the details of the game, I am currently working on this page: https://shmups.wiki/library/Jamestown

This game is a vast improvement on the original game. The original became bland really quickly while this one adds a bullet cancelling mechanic and therefore more dense patterns too while keeping the soul drain mechanic from the original. Survival and scoring are more interesting and fun now. It also seems like the last second kill bonus for bosses was removed which I strongly prefer.

My only really big issue is that there are a few bullet sprites that are way too tiny.

This game is very charming and I enjoyed it a lot for its presentation and most of its stages and bosses. However, it comes with issues that do make it an acquired taste:

- Dying resets your power completely. It's often very possible to recover as the game isn't too difficult otherwise but it can be frustrating in some sections and especially when getting into the game.
- The pause button is P. I thought I simply couldn't pause until somebody told me that.
- There's no real practice mode. You can skip to a stage you've reached already but you'll start with minimum power.
- Stage 6 is a boss rush of all the previous bosses. It's purely just padding out the game loop.
- The snow stage often causes the game's framerate to go down from 60fps to 30fps. This doesn't slow down the game but it can be irritating. Luckily, the affected section doesn't require any precision.
- Bosses do not time out which is why there's an infinite in the game. This greatly discouraged me from caring about scoring.
-Sound effects can be played multiple times within the same frame and can end up being very loud as a result.

Unfortunately, I doubt the game will get updated or patched but one thing I'd really like is if there was a harder difficulty than Normal as well. There's only an easier one.

The first game suffers from having too much padding for cases with not a lot of payoff (and a lot of moments where you'll end up dying to point out obvious stuff). It mostly serves to build up the story which is continued in the second game.

And that second game is imo absolutely amazing. There's little padding, I'd say. In fact, I was surprised how quickly trials would get to the point. Its cases are also much better and therefore one of my favorite entries in the series.

This review is not final as the game is still in Early Access (v 0.9.7 beta at the time of the review). It may change to a positive review, depending on future changes, rebalancing and additions and I do believe that it has the potential to become a very fun game.

Super Retro Fighter is an individual stages vertizontal shmup that is intentionally designed to be frustrating. So far, it only has one mode. While it's called Arcade Mode, it lets you select an individual stage to take on. You unlock one after another and gain upgrade points based on your performance that you can spend on extra ships, bombs and shot power. These will certainly aid you but the trial and error remains.

The frustrating aspects of stages are not just limited to death traps that you will die to on your first attempts but also some stages being very long. In that regard, it feels like it's more of a patience test than a skill test quite often. The most extreme stage in that regard is 7-3 where it takes 8 and a half minutes to reach the boss, only to get wrecked on one of its phases until you figure out the tells a few attempts later which requires getting through the stage portion over and over as well.

Because of this, I can only recommend the game to masochists. And I would say that beating a lot of the more frustrating stages was quite satisfying.

On the other hand, there are also a good amount of stages that are bland, boring or extremely tedious. Those stages highlight that the difficulty truly is the main selling point as the base mechanics aren't that interesting.

However, there will be another mode called Adventure Mode which is going to be a "rougelike" according to the Early Access information on the store page.

Making a decision on whether to recommend this game or not has been a long back and forth for me. I had a good amount of fun with the game but with the issues I have with the game, I just can not recommend it.

This game has been updated to a newer version since the review. While I still do not recommend the game, some statements here may be out of date. I have checked v1.01 but I'm not going to update this review anytime soon.

This game's release was preceeded by plagiarism claims regarding the game's used sprites and art: https://twitter.com/KiwiSTG/status/1304355499312214016
The claim is that several enemies, bullet sprites and stage backgrounds were plagiarised from Cave shmups and that the overlay was plagiarised from Crimzon Clover World Ignition. This had caused the release to be delayed so that the dev could rework some of the assets in question.

Unfortunately, two additional factors would make people even more suspicious: the dev's aggressive response to the allegation and the fact that the game was originally already released in 2015 as Operation Dracula for iOS (the store page does not mention that at this point for some reason).

I think the unfortunate part of this debate is that it focused too much on the question whether it's legal or not when it is fair to assume that the majority of participants in it are no legal experts. The question should have been whether the practice of doing so is scummy or not which is subjective and the reason why I am bringing it up.

The dev states in the game's website https://rangokskies.samuraigamesgd.com/ that the assets were since changed "[...] in order to clear the game's name from such claims, and to prove that Rangok Skies is an original work rather than an inappropriate reproduction of other games." and I would agree that the game is very much its own in terms of gameplay.

If you still have an issue with this, you may not want to support the game. For those that don't have an issue with it, I would recommend looking into it further as I did enjoy my experience with it regardless.

The game allows you to choose between three characters and an unlockable character. Each has its own shot type and unique special which recharges over time while the bombs appear to function the same for each character. You can either hold your shot for a slower focus shot or tap (use the auto fire button) to move faster and shoot less bullets.

The game's skippable tutorial at the start explains the above but omits the following very important mechanic. Initiating your focus shot will make the ship release a burst that turns any enemy bullets into items. This is important as it's good for score and survival. There is a cooldown for the burst. If your hitbox is blinking, you can use it.

The maximum amount of lives you can have is 4 and you gain an extend every 500.000pts. If you already have 4 lives and reach the next threshold, you gain 150.000pts. The maximum amount of bombs you can have is 3. You gain a bomb by collecting bomb items. After dying, your bomb count is set to 1.

In addition to lives, you have HP. The first three characters have 3 HP and the Samurai has 2. HP can be restored with health items.

Bosses only have one phase and cycle through a variety of patterns. One exception is the first boss, though it only adds one more pattern to the pool. Since bosses have a lot of health, you will always loop at least once.

Enemies will drop items (power-up, score bonus, health or bomb). As far as I could tell the type of item an enemy drops is random, except for a few enemies that appear to have fixed item drops (like orange tanks on the left side always dropping bombs). During boss fights items will fall from the top of the screen. Those also appear random, including the position which makes it easy to miss them as they do fall fast.

There is no practice mode. A run of the game doesn't take too long but you will not have the opportunity to practice the last stages over and over right away.

At this time, I don't have Insane mode unlocked as I'm missing the achievement for not missing any enemies. You need to get all trophies.

The game is short and concise. A run takes 17 to 22 minutes and apart from the stage 1 boss, there aren't any parts that are boring.

I like the way lives work. You can only have up to 4 lives but you have many opportunities to get another life again. A clear would usually get you at least ~4 million points which is a good amount of potential extends.

The focus shot burst is your greatest device for scoring higher. It allows you to milk bosses as well and it will be up to you to decide whether you want to dump all your resources on the difficult patterns or go for score instead. You also want to delay some enemy kills, so the mechanic adds a lot of score potential.

While there are some patterns I dislike, many are certainly no pushovers, especially during boss fights.

I do not like the random element in the item drops from enemies and during bosses.

The soundtrack isn't very pleasant to listen to. It's not bad but it's basically blasting with max energy throughout 99% of a run. I found myself turning down the volume immediately to listen to other music or videos in the background.

I currently find the stage 3 and stage 4 boss to be rather bs, especially the stage 3 boss. Some of their patterns are just gross to me at this moment. I'm fine with the stage 5 boss. While it has some of the types of patterns of previous bosses that I dislike, I think they're more reasonable and fit the final boss well enough. Nevertheless, I find the bosses and random items (plus location) to be a bad combination. While the game does provide you with more than enough resources for a 1cc, it certainly does not feel fair when going for a no hit run (yeah, there is an achievement for that).