Astrodogs

Astrodogs

TL;DR : Never played a StarFox game, but this goofy, chill little dog game makes me want to.

What is this funny little dog shooty game?

Astrodogs is a 3D, forward moving, on-rails shooter with enough charm to change your attitude for the entire day. The game revolves around 8 or so small stages with unique aesthetics, designs, music, enemies and bosses. (My personal favourites are Barkstille and Barkadia.)

I’ve never played something like this before, is it difficult?

At first, yes. But if you keep at it, you’ll learn the levels, you’ll learn the 5 techniques you need to know (4 different “special” attacks and a bullet-time mechanic). The bosses all have a gimmick to them which at first, is SUPER annoying, because you’ll be tanking damage and dealing none, but you’ll figure it out and feel like even Einstein is no match for your superior intellect.

Real player with 8.6 hrs in game


Read More: Best Bullet Hell On-Rails Shooter Games.


As a die hard fan of Star-Fox. There hasnt been any games to come out that capture the on rails space shooting magic. This game does! I love the levels, music, controls and overall humour. A real treat!

Real player with 8.2 hrs in game

Astrodogs on Steam

CosmoDreamer

CosmoDreamer

I have over 100 hours spread across the demos, and I’ve cleared most of this dev’s past games on their highest difficulty. I’ve been anticipating this game since March, and it has far exceeded my high expectations.

Veterans can enjoy a good challenge and the full experience on Nightmare difficulty. It’s a step above arcade difficulty, and a little under a 2 loop experience, at a whopping 9 stages and a cruel TLB reminiscent of Mushihimesama’s Aki. While I haven’t cleared Nightmare Trial at the time of this review (might take a month or two of hard grinding to do so), I can guarantee anyone at any skill level will have a good time with this game. It’s great fun for what it’s worth.

Real player with 121.5 hrs in game


Read More: Best Bullet Hell Shooter Games.


Honestly, I’m surprised that this game’s price tag is this low. For what it provides in terms of gameplay, it should charge at least twice as much. This is an absolute jewel among indie shmups; it doesn’t try to hide its obvious influences (Touhou and CAVE STGs being the big ones here), even makes some references to them in its bullet patterns, and realizes them very nicely. The scoring system is simple and straight-forward, and routing Nightmare difficulty (which I’m currently ultra stuck on) is like a gateway drug to DDP or Mushihimesama. There’s even some secrets to discover.

Real player with 41.2 hrs in game

CosmoDreamer on Steam

BLUE SABERS: Early Mission

BLUE SABERS: Early Mission

Overview

Use conventional and three types of special weapons to overcome difficult situations.

Take control of the battlefield with support aircraft!

Long-established STG development team, Blue&White, the first new one in 13 years, and a new origin!

Story

More than a decade of warfare between the MUltinational COmpanys Community (MUCOC) and the International Unification Treaty Organization (IUTO) has left both sides exhausted and A stalemate had been reached.

To break the deadlock, the MUCOC fleet gathered its remaining forces and launched Operation Earth Descent.

Although the IUTOs were allowed to descend, they put up a desperate resistance to prevent the expansion of the front line.

However, there were not enough surplus forces, and the counter-offensive was left in the hands of a mish-mash of new recruits and reserve forces.

The name of the unit was the “Blue Sabres”.

Thus the battle later known as “Second MUCOC War” has began.

Gameplay

The main point of the game is how to make a way with powerful weapons and supply.

Break out of a difficult situation by mastering three types of special weapons, which are limited to normal armament and singular numbers.

Calling for your support aircraft, Garuda, allows you to refuel your special weapons and restore your ship’s shields.

The key to victory is the timing of calling the Garuda.

Features

  • A shmup with a unique supply system.

  • Dynamic camera work with 3D graphics added to the 2D shooting experience.

  • 7 stages + Tutorial

  • 6 ships + 2 support aircrafts

  • Gamepad supported.


Read More: Best Bullet Hell Flight Games.


BLUE SABERS: Early Mission on Steam

One Pixel TWB

One Pixel TWB

2D platform game with minimalist graphics in Pixel art, your goal is to climb the castle while defeating various bosses that try to prevent your passage. With each floor you pass the game will present you with increasingly difficult bosses to defeat, add this to dialogs that portray the history of this universe and an extremely difficult difficulty for the vast majority of people.

To defeat these bosses you have the following abilities:

  • Create Platforms Underneath You.

  • Shoot.

  • Dash.

  • Jump and Duck

  • 2d Movement.

The graphics of the game has a focus mostly on the colors black, white, grayscale and red, in some parts of the game other colors may appear but are almost null.

During the game you follow the point of view of the White Pixel who is having his city attacked, you as a good emperor must stop the enemy and if you have a thirst for knowledge can try to find out what caused all this chaos.

One Pixel The War Begins is our second game presenting this very interesting universe of Pixels, unlike its older brother this game has a much wider variety of Phases, mechanics, Enhancements, Characters and more.

Also the soundtrack of the game is absolutely original of us.

One Pixel TWB on Steam

KaveXplorer

KaveXplorer

  • The game is good for its wide variety of play styles. The way that skill upgrades are randomized makes each run unique. + Some shrines can change how you play completely. + Nice graphic design. - The black guy skill hitbox is bullshit. - Switching skills is a bit hard. - No music. Overall it’s good, the dev said those bad point will be improved in the Full Release, hope what he said is true.

Real player with 1.1 hrs in game

I want to first off thank the developer for the free evaluation key provided to me. I also want to express that no keys have ever influenced my review or score in even the smallest way. The last Steam key provided from a developer made my MISS series and a 10% score… Just sayin'

KaveXplorer is a game that will likely appeal to fans of the Binding of Isaac crowd. People who enjoy rogue like games, bullet hell games, and action RPGs are also likely to enjoy this game. It’s very well coded, and is very challenging to play as well, like most rogue-like games are!

Real player with 0.7 hrs in game

KaveXplorer on Steam

Abettor

Abettor

It’s like Skyrim with guns!

Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

add a kill count

Real player with 0.2 hrs in game

Abettor on Steam

TOUHOU SKY ARENA MATSURI CLIMAX

TOUHOU SKY ARENA MATSURI CLIMAX

Very fun game. There is plenty of characters you can play. Voice acting and graphic is good too.

Though if you are mainly interested in playing online then you should think twice before buying this game. Vast majority of players are Asian and if you are, for example, a European you will probably have to put up with lags unless you host a match. Also, sadly there aren’t that many players. Depending on the time you play you may not even be able to find an opponent for quite a long. What I didn’t liked about ranked games is that it seems that if you abandon the match there is no penalty. I happened to play with someone who quited 2-3 times in a row. I know that it’s annoying playing with lags, it can be hard to win unless you are a way better than your opponent or just got a bit lucky, but if there’s no penalty at all for abandoning the matches you just cannot drop in ranking even if you keep quitting them all the time.

Real player with 30.9 hrs in game

There was nothing wrong with the game play or presentation. The game is very entertaining to play and enough effort was placed into the audio/visual quality to pass as a good game. Everything about the game was fine all the way to the point when I started doing the single player mode, then I came into technical problems.

I am unable to complete arcade mode without the game crashing during the load of a stage. A couple of times it happened on stage 2, then another time on stage 5.

These crashes do also occur in Sky Adventure mode, but since it’s stage select and no progress is lost, I didn’t mind it as much.

Real player with 29.2 hrs in game

TOUHOU SKY ARENA MATSURI CLIMAX on Steam

Star Apprentice: Magical Murder Mystery

Star Apprentice: Magical Murder Mystery

Y’all I think someone in the staff likes

! Jojo.

On a more serious note, this was really fun to play! The sprite work is really great and I loved the opening when you start the game. I can very much tell that this game took some inspirations from games like Danganronpa and other murder mystery VN-type games. Along with some inspirations from games like Touhou and Ikaruga. Now, I’m not that good at bullet hells so when I checked the options and saw infinite lives I went “oh thank god”. I still very much enjoyed the gameplay from it and having to dodge the bullets while trying to figure out whether the current statement is contradictory or not (or finding the time to focus on reading it in some cases).

Real player with 1.9 hrs in game

I played this game one night with friends and had a blast!

The unique and interesting concept definitely makes this a game to try out if you have some time to kill as the game is quite short in length. Especially appealing to Bullet Hell or Dangan Ronpa fans but can be played by anyone!

  • The dynamic soundtrack is awesome and goes lovely along side the detective work. Very befitting of the “Detective” tag!

  • Minnie and the other characters have interactions that are sweet and conversation is smooth and feels genuine.

Real player with 1.8 hrs in game

Star Apprentice: Magical Murder Mystery on Steam

Xander the Monster Morpher: Universe Breaker

Xander the Monster Morpher: Universe Breaker

This is a very fun game, definitely worth the price!

Real player with 55.2 hrs in game

Do you like catching monsters?

Do you like… BEING the monster?

Do you like fusing monsters together and making ridiculous and almost broken monsters?

Then I’m pretty sure you would like this game

Real player with 11.8 hrs in game

Xander the Monster Morpher: Universe Breaker on Steam

Space Endeavor

Space Endeavor

Space Endeavor is an Action Shooter Game where you can shoot Enemies with many different types of Guns. It isn’t an easy game though, there are many bosses you must defeat in order to unlock new guns, and eventually, beat the game!

There are 3 bosses that you can defeat to unlock new guns.

There are 4 guns that you can use to defeat enemies.

Controls:

WASD to move

Left mouse button to shoot

Shift to roll

The NPCs aren’t decoration.

PRESS SHIFT IN FRONT OF NPCS TO INTERACT WITH THEM.

GUNS:

LASER PISTOL:

-Shoots 1 bullet

-Deals 3 damage

-Found in the lobby

LASER AR:

-Shoots consecutive bullets

-Deals 5 damage

-Dropped by the first boss

Star Cannon:

-Shoots consecutive stars

-Shoots homing stars

-Deals 15 Damage

-Dropped by the second boss

OctoShot:

-Shoots ink in 8 directions

-Shoots homing ink

-Deals 25 Damage

-Dropped by the third boss

Space Endeavor on Steam