Recent reviews by duckweedseattle

This is my favorite route for TS with 200 miles of track to explore yet lots of little details. The Class 101 is a very attractive and detailed model, plus it's fun to drive.

This is a an above average, budget-priced bullet hell game that could be great with just a few tweaks. I've only beaten the first three bosses and played for less than an hour upon writing this review, so my opinion may change over time.

First, the balance. The laser is ridiculously over-powered. Or perhaps, rather, the other weapons are under-powered compared to the laser. It takes mere seconds to beat a boss with a double laser, vs. about 50 times longer (literally!) to beat the same boss when you don't have the double-laser combo... and the first time you're hit, you lose both lasers (plus your overdrive damage bonus)! This feels too punishing as it basically turns the game into a challenge to get the two lasers, then see how far you can make it without taking a single hit. It feels too all-or-nothing. I think the balance would be better if your ship only dropped one laser--not both--unpon taking a hit, and if the non-laser weapons either did a bit more damage or the lasers did less.

(UPDATE: After giving this some more thought, I don't think increasing non-laser weapon damage is a good idea as it would make the non-boss enemies too easy to destroy. I think a better approach might be to grant each boss roughly half as much health (so that non-laser weapons are more effective) but compensate for this by drastically reducing the damage done by the laser--probably cutting it in half as well. This way, the laser or double laser won't cut through boss stages in mere seconds, yet players that lose the laser(s) will still have a hope in hell of defeating a boss without one.

Second, the dialogue. Use of the word "sh#t" in the dialogue, along with the fact that the voice-over seems to say "sh#t" instead of "ship" every single time you gain an extra ship, makes it appear as if the dev is a giggling 8-year-old obsessed with bodily functions. Then there is the use of the f-word in the dialogue. I'm not opposed to cursing in games, books, or movies, but it should serve some function. Here, it neither enhances the characterization (which is practically absent to begin with) nor addss any grit or realism. It just comes across as juvenile and amateurish. It also means that my kids can't play the game until they're older. I hope the dev takes out the cursing because it detracts from an otherwise fine game by making it appear more amateurish than it otherwise might, based on the otherwise fine presentation, polish, and gameplay.

Third, the game does not display your score when you die. It takes you back to the title screen after you click through a couple lines of dialogue, and then it displays the high score. It would be nice if the game showed you your score when you die. I would expect this to be an easy fix. While discussing the score, I'd like to commend the dev for keeping the score total low and reasonable rather than in the zillions of points like in some bullet hells. The latter approach just makes it harder to make read the score and, thankfully, that's not a problem here.

The gameplay, apart from the aforementioned weapon balance complaint, is tight and fun. The ship's control is very good using an XBox 360 controller. The amount of slow-down when using focus mode feels just about right and makes it much easier to dodge bullets while sacrificing some rate-of-fire. This trade-off also feels just right. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the control.

There is a good variety in enemies, mini-bosses, and bosses. The boss stages and bullet patterns are fun and interesting, if not revolutionary. The graphics are simple, yet crisp and appealing, and I never once lost track of my ship in the swarm of enemy bullets, despite the fact that there was a lot of red on the screen at one time. The sound effects are sparse but functional, and the level designs are satisfactory if unambitious. There isn't much story, but this style of game doesn't need one. I'm glad that there isn't more dialogue to click through, actually, because it would only detract from the game's good sense of pacing and momentum by interfering with the action. The amount of dialogue felt just right. The little plot twists, as revealed by the bosses, were a fun and welcome surprise.

I commend the dev for choosing a $0.99 price point. I've paid $4.99 for games that are less polished and less fun.

Overall, I recommend this game to anyone with an interest in bullet hell games who isn't expecting the next CAVE- or Touhou-style masterpiece. For the price, the game is reasonably fun and appealing, and it offers a good amount of challenge. I'm looking forward to spending more time with it as well as trying more games from this dev.

I played and enjoyed the CD-ROM version of this game back in the day, but the Steam version is a mess. The default controls don't work well, and using a program such as Joy To Key won't help because the controls are already partially mapped (unsuccessfully) to a game controller. The game allows you to remap the keys... except that it doesn't actually work. The game doesn't save your changes.

But, worst of all, the game crashes almost constantly. I finally gave up on remapping the keys and tried to make do with the sub-optimal default key assignment, only to find myself booted out of the game and staring at an error message window roughly once every 1-2 minutes of gameplay.

I really wanted to like this one because it brought back fond memories of the CD-ROM version. But, in the end, I decided that it just wasn't worth the effort and frustration.

This is a fun, colorful, and all-around well done game, despite occasional crazy difficulty spikes that caused me to replay a given level 40+ times. I played and beat this game (the original 100 levels) before it was on Steam. I'm glad to see it on here.

I don't think I ever laughed so hard playing a couch coop as I did playing this game with my daughter. It's fun, frustrating, and at times brilliant. The art style was initially a turn off but it grew on me as I began to realize that it suits the tone of the gameplay perfectly.

Fun, short game with an interesting retro pixel-art style. Difficulty is spot on: challenging in the later levels, but not too much so. I like this game because it's simple, fast, and doesn't wear out its welcome or take itself too seriously. My daughter also played and enjoyed it.

It's very short (60-70 min.) and very easy which might lead me to recommend it for kids, except that some of the subject matter is not suitable for kids. I'm not sure what the intended target audience is supposed to be. Still, I enjoyed it. The story as well as the visual style kept me interested for the hour or so it took to play through the game.

Cute but short kid-friendly game. We encountered at least two glitches -- one involving possessing an object from the wrong house (esentially killing the game since you could no longer see or control your ghost, or leave the object) and one involving an emptied house failing to recognize that it had been cleared (the status still showed 1 person even though all 20 had been scared away). Even with these problems, which will hopefully be addressed in future updates, my kids still enjoyed this game a lot. I'm not sure I could recommend it for adults. There simply isn't enough content.