Bartlow’s Dread Machine
Check out the full written review: https://www.confidentgamers.com/blog/bartlows-dread-machine-review-pc
Bartlow’s Dread Machine takes us back to the simpler times when arcade machines were more mechanical filled with gears, pulleys and levers. This twin stick shooter injects a small dose of style and imagery which we quite welcomed. While not perfect, Bartlow’s Dread Machine does hold our attention long enough, taking us through a story filled with mystery, intrigue and suspense.
The twin stick shooter has been around for awhile, but Tribetoy and Beep Games have presented it in a new stylish package. The details of the moving mechanical gears and parts to the old time amusement park music, Bartlow’s Dread Machine is a refreshing entry in the gaming market place. This game is simple, but also throws you into the gauntlet which puts a smile on your face when you make it out.
– Real player with 12.7 hrs in game
Read More: Best Arcade Shooter Games.
I’m generally not a fan of Early Access, so this was the first time I’d ever bought a game early. From the second I saw a trailer, I knew I had to have it. Months ago, I enjoyed the first few worlds. Today, there’s some good and bad within the full product. There are a few difficulty spikes in the later half of the game, and the unfavorable lives system causes some frustration. And sometimes the environments are a bit too dark to really get a good grip on things. But outside of those few gripes, this is a twin stick shooter unlike any other I’ve ever played. The one hundred year old style is really cool, reminding me a lot of pinball. The way the levels shift, the way everything is attached to metal rods, and the way the characters automate are all really delightful. Going all-in on that presentation reminds me a lot of Puppeteer (PS3) which I find is extremely underrated. There’s a lot of love that went into fully realizing what a turn-of-the-20th-century game would look, sound, and feel like. I wasn’t initially sure how the traversal would feel, but moving around the slotted tracks as you blast the various types of foes is both satisfying and fun. Fans of serviceable gameplay, who really love games with rich, unique atmospheres should find plenty to enjoy.
– Real player with 9.5 hrs in game
Jamestown
First off, if you are interested in this game, I recommend getting Jamestown+ instead. It has two more stages and more ships.
Jamestown is a shmup with its stages primarily designed around co-op gameplay. However, enemy HP does scale so that enemies don’t become sponges if played solo. More about solo gameplay on higher difficulties later.
Jamestown doesn’t provide you with a bomb mechanic. Instead it has a hyper-like mechanic called vaunt. It will greatly increase dealt damage and create a shield which absorbs bullets upon activation. The duration of the vaunt can be increased by collecting the golden items. If it runs out, you’ll gain a significant amount of score, especially after a long vaunt. Cancelling the vaunt manually will provide you with brief invincibility and only provide you with a fraction of the score you’d get otherwise.
– Real player with 200.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Arcade Shoot 'Em Up Games.
HO-LEE SCHNITZELS IT’S THIS GAME
BETTER BUCKLE INTO YOUR SPACESHIP BECAUSE WE’VE GOT ALIEN SPANIARDS TO KILL
DO YOU LIKE GAMES WITH TONS OF BULLETS? DO YOU LIKE VERTICALLY SCROLLING GAMES? DO YOU LIKE GAMES WITH ROCK-AWESOME MUSIC? DO YOU LIKE GAMES WITH ALTERNATE RE-TELLINGS OF AMERICAN HISTORY? DO YOU JUST LIKE FREAKIN' SWEET SHOOT-EM-UPS? THEN JAMESTOWN IS THE GAME FOR YOU
IF YOU’VE PLAYED ANY SORT OF SHOOT-EM-UP BEFORE THEN YOU’LL PROBABLY ALREADY KNOW HOW THIS GOES DOWN BUT I SWEAR TO THE ALMIGHTY EMPRAH HIMSELF IF YOU PASS THIS UP BECAUSE OF THAT I WILL PERSONALLY COME TO YOUR HOUSE AND TAKE A MASSIVE DUMP ON YOUR FRONT LAWN
– Real player with 11.4 hrs in game
Tetropunk
was ready to recommend it before even buying it..
but not as long as there a crucial troll bug - pieces speed randomly increases so much it’s unplayable and you can’t do a thing.
fix it.
also, as was mentioned - slow moving animation. and a fact you can not move some pieces when they close to a wall. clunky controls.
upd: while speedplaying, “ghost blocks” may happen. when texture glitches, and actual invisible models keep going.
– Real player with 23.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Arcade Casual Games.
I don’t usually like doing reviews, especially negative ones, but I feel like I need to do this one, because honestly I find the 78% positive reviews on this game really misleading.
I love tetris, and I like playing a decent tetris clone. Unfortunately this game is not decent, at least by my standards.
Let’s start with the pros, which are few and far between: this game is cheap, it has colorful achievements and they are fairly “easy” to get (took me 1,5 hours roughly).
Ok now the reasons why I can’t recommend this game, even for the dirty cheap price of 39 cents when it’s on sale:
– Real player with 11.1 hrs in game
Caromble!
Here’s a new original reinvention of the classic Arkanoid/Breakout game from The Netherlands. It has the paddle, blocks and multiple power ups with plenty of new features to make this more fun and challenging than its predecessors.
Powershot
At any time you can charge up your paddle with your lmb (left mouse button) for one power shot but the catch is you can’t move while charging up. When you release the lmb before you’re fully charged, the paddle’s energy level starts dropping. Once your paddle is fully charged you can let go of the lmb. With a powershot you can make the ball shoot through regular blocks and special blocks that can’t be destroyed with regular shots.
– Real player with 101.0 hrs in game
“So much more than a game…..CAROMBLE! IS ART !!!!”
For Christmas, 1973 I was fortunate enough to receive the very first console game system available in America….Odyssey by Magnavox. Though it advertised as having about a dozen games, in reality it was just a dozen forms of PONG with plastic overlays for your TV set to create slightly differing game effects. (Not a criticism…PONG was a great game!) Who would have imagined that over FORTY years later, the most exciting new game I’m playing currently is actually just an unbelievably amazing new version of the original master, PONG…..Caromble!.
– Real player with 78.4 hrs in game
Evorales
I’m not a big enthusiasthic about danmaku shmups, however I think this game is gonna make me enjoy the genre more and more from now on. Very simplistic but pleasing to the eye graphics, a great soundtrack and a tight gameplay.
I don’t think I’ll get good enough to finish the game on “Nightmare” difficulty any time soon, but one day I might get lucky and destroy the Gnuferno once and for all! 💣🐃💥
– Real player with 7.6 hrs in game
its a pretty good and well polished game. the only flaw i have is that you are overwhelmed by the amount of stuff to learn when you start. perhaps a tutorial level where you could try out and practice those mechanics would be good. but apart from that great game. by the way, what engine / language did you use to make the game?
– Real player with 0.9 hrs in game
Wild Guns Reloaded
A major & faithful remaster of a steampunk, wild west themed SNES shooter.
The graphics & sounds have been updated, two new characters & stages have been added, the play area has been widened for modern monitors, and more added features. The only things they removed are the Bonus Stages and the VS. mode, which were both just bare-bones shooting gallery mini-games anyway.
Comparing the graphics and such to the SNES, it’s a vast improvement, or at the very least, more detailed. The music has been rearranged. If you prefer the classic sounds & music of the SNES version, you can unlock that option when you beat the game on any difficulty without using continues. The game plays well on both a controller and keyboard due to how minimal the controls were even on the original.
– Real player with 34.9 hrs in game
Absolutely great version of a great game.
It’s the original game but with widescreen resolution, up to 4 players co-op instead of 2, 2 new characters who play radically differently but still preserve the spirit of the game, and 2 new stages; but also leaderboards and achievements. The leaderboard really makes sense for a game like this where scoring is king, and the achievements are actually challenging and push the player into improving himself also.
There are some other changes to the gameplay as well. With widescreen, you’ll find more enemies on screen at once and scattered more all over, but the pacing is slower than in the original game, and stages last longer. Bosses also behave slightly differently, a couple of them even have a missing pattern. The bonus stages are gone also, but that’s not a big loss.
– Real player with 29.7 hrs in game
Sine Mora
Sine Mora and I have a pretty unique relationship. I first played it just before I really started to get into shmups, and a lot of the unique mechanics really hooked me, despite the incredibly high difficutly. However, after having broadened my horizons to a greater variety of traditional shoot ‘em ups, a lot of the fondness I once had for it isn’t there anymore. That isn’t to say Sine Mora is a bad game–not at all, I still find it to be quite a unique, enjoyable game–but it doesn’t convince me its time-manipulating mechanics are as refined as they could have been, or provide as much a benefit to the gameplay as they could be.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
This is a spoilerfree review of the game played on the easyest difficulty.
This was easyly the best shmup I have ever played.
The story contains time manipulation so it is rather hard to follow, after you beat the game you get an encyclopedia though that gives informations about the game world. that kind of makes it easyer, the wikipedia article on the game erases any questions that should have remained.
Anyway, aside from time being part of the story it is also a game mechanic, as you can slow down time when the hell the bullets put you in is to big. it has a meter though so you cant just slowmo yourself through the game. There is also a limited amount of time you have before dying that gets a few extra seconds every time you kill an enemy and that gets reduced when you are hit, so its also kind of your health.
– Real player with 3.9 hrs in game
Gestalt: Steam & Cinder
Join Aletheia and a vibrant cast of characters as they race to discover the secrets of the Steam City of Canaan. Clobber armies of Clockwork golems and hunt horrors that slither through depths once forgotten. Thwart the twisted schemes of Canaan’s corrupt overseers, the nefarious Comitium. Fight for mankind’s survival and reveal the dark and dangerous truths riveted into the very foundations of the Steam City.
Step into the shoes of Aletheia and tread the path of the Soldner, an elite mercenary of Irkalla who lives one job at a time. Take up the sword and gun, combining a slew of melee combos and deadly gunplay in staggering feats of skill that will leave your enemies reeling.
Chase down a frenzied mutant charging through the grimy stalls of the Irkallan Black Market, leap across the molten pools blazing in the eternal furnace of Fornax, and fight off hordes of blood-drunk Raiders that prowl the fathomless depths of the Scrap Sea in search of their malignant god.
Canaan is vast, and inside its swirling steam lie innumerable mysteries waiting to be unraveled. After a routine job goes awry, Aletheia sets out on an epic journey to uncover ancient enigmas threatening the very foundations of the Steam City. Challenge powerful new rivals and catch up with old friends as you carve your path through Canaan. Take on side jobs to earn a bit of extra scrap and delve into a history lost to the vagaries of time.
Or maybe you’d just like to wash down your worries at Vincent’s Pub and listen for a rumor or two…
Dash, dodge, and double-jump to keep out of harm’s way and stay in one piece. Wield a furious and fearsome array of abilities and grow stronger with each foe you defeat. Spend experience points to unlock new skills and trade scrap for accessories to customize your build and go toe-to-toe with some of the most formidable creatures to ever lumber beneath the copper sky.
Hear that? The clang of a hammer stinging blood-red steel… The sinister murmur of heresies rushing through ancient pipes… Riddles echoing through vaulted halls of marble and madness. Sounds like fate has a job in store for you, Soldner—it’s time to earn your scrap.
“Thine trembling works of Reason naught but ingots gleaming darkly by the light of a cindered heart—for what art thine flesh before the mother’s touch of flame?”
- Dreams of the Steam Saint Anais, XXXIV, iii
Sine Mora EX
What I can appreciate about Sine Mora is how the central plot element becomes the central game mechanic in a very fluid and innovative way. Sine Mora is a game about time control, and its central game mechanic is that you never lose health, but time. If you take damage, that’s time off the clock. If you kill enemies, that’s time added to the clock. You are essentially invincible, but lose powerups and the game if you ever get hurt enough times that you run out the clock. A clock that is always ticking down, but either gains or loses time as a penalty or reward in combat.
– Real player with 14.4 hrs in game
While it may be a unique take on the bullet hell formula, Sine Mora’s attempts at being its own thing put it at odds with the notion of being well balanced, and it ultimately ends up flawed to the point that it’s an active struggle to enjoy.
To start off by giving praise where it’s due, the game is gorgeous, the soundtrack is high-quality, the controls are mostly fluid, the story has some really cool twists, the boss design is fab, and the Hungarian voice acting is pretty dope (no idea about the English, as I switched to the original voice track from the get-go).
– Real player with 6.7 hrs in game
RoadPunk
Well its fun and entertaining. You have to hard exit out of game, which is not fun and fullscreen doesn’t really work on the computer.
Review at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8wAkyhbMzY
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Good for fun.
– Real player with 0.3 hrs in game