Silicomrades

Silicomrades

Grab your local friend or via Steam Remote Play, build your robots with unique abilities, and prepare yourself for shoot-up with evil robotic armies. All that while receiving (more or less) severe, enraging (or just funny) defects in 10+ original episodes, all packed with stunning hand-drawn visuals. Fall apart but do not fall back!

TWO ROBOT BUDDIES

Crawlbot and Jetbot are different in terms of playstyle and customization options, but they complement each other. Despite being from low-quality materials and prone to malfunctions.

BUILD THEM UP…

Assemble your very own robots from various bonus parts, choose more faulty parts to build a more powerful but more unstable robot. Get additional moving directions, bigger magazine or active reload ability.

…AND WATCH THEM FALL APART

All bonuses need to be balanced out with faulty parts in a unique “High risk - High reward” customization. Once your robot is damaged enough, it will start to malfunction. Be prepared for various defects such as friendly fire, nonstop movement, or reloading a random number of bullets.

VARIABLE HAND-DRAWN ENEMIES AND ENVIRONMENTS

Play through 7+ episodes, each consisting of three missions designed to be played in one sitting forming a short story. In every one of them, meet different enemies and experience variable beautiful environments, all created and animated by hand.

COMEDIC TOTALITY

We have chosen the most boring theme on the planet Earth, added robots, turned it upside down, and took it to an absurd extreme, thus forming the brand new genre of comedic totality. Your enemies are vicious, tireless, and armed with suitcases. They stop at nothing to reach their sinister goal. Except for the lunch break, there is no way they are going to miss that.

SEE YOU ON OUR DISCORD CHANNEL!

JOIN THE RESISTANCE NOW, BECOME A SILICOMRADE, AND HELP SAVE INNOCENT LOW-COST ROBOTS!


Read More: Best Co-op Multiplayer Games.


Silicomrades on Steam

1993 Space Machine

1993 Space Machine

I confess I purchased this mainly for the nostalgia factor. After completing 1993:SM I can say the tagline “celebrating games like Gradius, R-Type and Life Force” is realistic but tends to underestimate some bullet hell elements that are present in game.

Bullet hell did indeed surface in year 1993 but was not a popular subgenre until the second half of the decade. What we have here, to summarize, is a mostly classic horizontal shooter, with occasional incursions in bullet hell territory - especially in some overcrowded passages where complex bullet geometries and bullet wave patterns tend to show up, challenging you to not only shoot but dodge, too. I’d say the classic/BH ratio is 80/20, but your mileage may vary.

Real player with 19.9 hrs in game


Read More: Best Co-op Side Scroller Games.


1993 Space Machine is short, simple but very fun 2D side scrolling Shoot Em' Up. The game is easy to pick up and play - You guide your space ship through five stages in your mission to defeat the final boss.

That is not to say the game itself is easy. Stages rapidly increase in difficulty and you will soon find yourself fending off multiple enemies and stage hazards. There are two classes of ships to choose from - A small, nimble but weaker ship or a slower ship that can tank more damage and carry more weapons. Personally I prefered the former, they were just generally better at avoiding enemy projectiles and stage hazards. I would recommend trying both types of ships and seeing which you prefer.

Real player with 13.1 hrs in game

1993 Space Machine on Steam

Pixel Galaxy

Pixel Galaxy

This game is ridiculously fun and bursting with creativity. I’ve never even played a bullet hell game before this one and I love it! The local co-op is also really fun to play and it lets you laugh at your ridiculous deaths with your friends! It’s got a bit of a difficulty spike but there are many modes to play and I still think it’s fun even when I do suck at it. It’s a great game whether you’re playing casually or seriously. The soundtrack is amazing, the graphics are sleek and colorful, and the gameplay is interesting, simple to learn, and challenging without being too frustrating. The ton of achievements also add a lot of humor and replay value to this game.

Real player with 35.6 hrs in game


Read More: Best Co-op Bullet Hell Games.


Tags: Shootemup & Bullet Hell

Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library

TLDR: One-screen endless wave survival bullet hell in which you collect pixels and evade others. Hard to tell which is which aas they are not consistently color coded. Game balance is iffy.

The problem with Pixel Galaxy is that it only does one thing and it does not do that one thing all that well. Collecting power ups makes your ship larger and thus easier to hit since your hitbox grows so large and the pixel patterns can be too tight together to avoid.

Real player with 18.0 hrs in game

Pixel Galaxy on Steam

Space God

Space God

With only two people they have created a very solid shoot ‘em up game

PROs:

  • Great performance, solid 60 fps

  • Great and clear special effects

  • Simple, responsive control

  • Upgradable aircrafts and weapons

  • Satisfying destroying hundred of enemies, no need to be serious when playing

  • Support for online and offline co-op

  • Fair challenge, very friendly to newcomers, and quickly to 100% achievements

NEUTRALs:

~ Quite repetitive with the same 20 maps per difficulty

~ Only one style of map, some confusing map layouts

Real player with 6.1 hrs in game

Summary: It’s a pretty good bullet-shooting game with some progression. The music fits the atmosphere and the graphics are great if you’re into neon/retro style. That being said, the game does feel repetitive after a while. There are ship/weapon upgrades but it’s nothing special, just increase in stats. There are 20 stages per difficulty and they don’t feel much different from each other. The selection of music is limited so you will hear the same music after a few stages. Overall, good value for the bucks, especially if you liked to play the bullet-shooting games at arcade.

Real player with 4.6 hrs in game

Space God on Steam

The Night Christmas Ended

The Night Christmas Ended

This game was my way of getting into the Christmas spirit and let me tell you, it was awesome. The game kinda reminds me of Buster Bros but with a twisted story and sometimes, weird game mechanics and politically incorrect humor.

I’ve beaten it on Bronze and Silver modes, just beaten Level 2-2 on Gold mode.

As per the game dev’s request in the opening cut-scene to be shown a Let’s Play of this game, here ya go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlKiBvELWVU

Real player with 11.3 hrs in game

In this unforgettable 2D adventure you’ll team up with the Giant Goblin to save Christmas.

Shoot all the evil candy because the only good candy, is a dead candy! Even when they are shaped like a bat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irXXshk3xr4

Real player with 10.8 hrs in game

The Night Christmas Ended on Steam

8-Bit Commando

8-Bit Commando

We wanted the best, you know the rest.

A Contra look-alike, that does not stand to its predecessor. But is it THAT bad? Let’s find out! The game greets you with a nice soundrack and pretty good 8-bit graphics. Unfortunately the gameplay is ruined by bad controls especially in terms of jumping. And when you can’t land on a platform becouse of fucked up controls - you know that this game has an issue. A prefect run can be ruined by a single jump and then it’s back to the beggining or nearest check point (THANKS GOD FOR THAT). Also this game has a TIMER. And when such slow-paste game makes you rush the level becouse of the mistakes you made before - it doesnt’t help the situation at all. At least it has decent multiplayer.

Real player with 18.9 hrs in game

–-


Rather than improving upon Contra / Probotector-games due better tech nowadays, this game just feels cumbersome (I really don’t have more fitting word here).

Main reason why I don’t recommend buying this game due how blatantly unfair this game is.

Note, this doesn’t mean you wouldn’t be able to beat this game. But it is still still unfair.

  • First of, and the majour flaw: The checkpoint-system is for the most part pointless / not worth it. In fact, it is just better to restart the the whole stage most of the times since they’re really short.

Real player with 7.3 hrs in game

8-Bit Commando on Steam

Secret of Harrow Manor 2

Secret of Harrow Manor 2

Do not buy

Real player with 0.8 hrs in game

Spent most of my time in the starting lobby, perhaps adding a control information for keyboard would be helpful. Game was clunky and controls were very rough. Aiming seemed to be impossible. Would not recommend for PC - VR may be better experience?

Real player with 0.6 hrs in game

Secret of Harrow Manor 2 on Steam

STROLL

STROLL

STROLL is a top-down dungeon crawler, set in a dystopian world. From your safe haven you will rebuild society-one stroll at a time. Explore fallen cities, deserted suburbs and eerie forests, as you look for other survivors, materials for crafting or maybe a shiny new gun.

STROLL on Steam

Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade

Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade

Great port with one glaring omission: the lack of 4:3 resolution support. Running the game in full screen on my 4:3 monitor results in letterboxed 16:9, which causes two significant issues:

  1. Darius Gaiden cannot be played in true fullscreen at its native aspect ratio. You can either play in stretched letterboxed 16:9, or in letterboxed-and-pillarboxed 4:3. No matter what, it won’t fill the screen.

  2. Multi-monitor mode for the games that support it cannot be correctly lined up and scaled, because the “seams” of the screens don’t correspond with the monitor resolutions. Stretching the game past the internal boundaries of the game resolution just results in the image being cropped, even though there is screen space there; said screen space is just black. I presume this is also an issue on multi-monitor 16:9 displays.

Real player with 6.4 hrs in game

EDIT: It’s been almost a week and nothing regarding possible issues is coming, kinda scared they aren’t saying anything about it, not recommending until they at least give words for the issues on the port (That is, if M2 stops reposting Senjin Aleste Fanart in their goddamn Twitter…)

The price is quite excessive if they don’t fix these issues (It’s 2021, these issues shouldn’t be there in the first place, no, “M2 is not experienced with PC, that’s why BASIC stuff happened” is not an excuse).

Not a perfect port, but it’s been less than 2 days since it was released.

Real player with 5.8 hrs in game

Darius Cozmic Collection Arcade on Steam

Farlight Commanders

Farlight Commanders

SINGLE PLAYER EXPERIENCE

I started playing just a bit to take a break from my uni work and I spent 3 hours in the first sit. BEWARE, it’s a deep game with multiple choices, make sure you check the shop before you spent your ability points so you can buy the right things for yourself and the ship. If you spend your points lately the game will be way more challenging. The game needs more feedback to the player and be more clear at some points with the management of the ship and the ability points but, if you are patient and spend some time with it you will love it.

Real player with 5.4 hrs in game

Has great potential as a coop 2D side scroller mixing both infantry combat and spaceship to spaceship combat. Some of the UI navigation is a bit clunky and takes some getting used to and will hopefully be polished over time.

Real player with 2.0 hrs in game

Farlight Commanders on Steam