BLACK BIRD
BLACK BIRD has easily been one of my biggest shmup related surprises of the year. I follow shmup releases as close as possible and as a result I feel that I’m aware of most upcoming STGs on Steam. The first time I heard about this game was around the time CAVE employees streamed it on their Twitch channel. I came across it again by chance in the 2018 Winter Sale and decided to purchase it.
This game is the debut of Japanese indie developer Onion Games on Steam. I’m not familiar with them but evidently they’re known for a few games including Million Onion Hotel. BLACK BIRD’s story is about a little girl that dies in the street. After dying she is reborn as a crow and starts to destroy everything. The story, graphics, music, and environments are all well designed. I’d call it almost a steam punk style opera type of aesthetic. When I originally saw the game on CAVE TV the style didn’t connect with me, but when I actually played the game I enjoyed it.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark Fantasy Soundtrack Games.
Imagine a remake of Fantasy Zone with Tim Burton’s flavor of adorable bleakness, japanese attention to gameplay detail and quirkiness. The game starts with a young girl reborn from despair as a Black Bird to destroy the world. The more you kill, the bigger and more powerful you’ll grow. This dark premise is offset by cute spritework, silly animations and a very eccentric soundtrack. It’s just a delight to consume the cruel world, which left you to die. The gameplay and its scoring is well tuned. The player is constantly managing risk, reward and greed. Nuking a whole screen at max combo with a completely pumped up bird is the most satisfying climax very few shoot ‘em ups manage to pull off. The first play through is easy mode and completion unlocks the slightly harder true mode. Online leader board for global score chasing just adds to the replay value.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
Dragon Blaze
This is my favorite games from PSIKYO! Great port even there’re something missing like restart button for stage.
What is stand out for me for this port and I really have to praise CC are the quality of sprite and sound just amazing!
this port even came with a manual no more wondering how game mechanic work for now fork who want to try the game!
Online ranking working fine! (Like now there’re like 70 people on ranking)
What I really want is a leaderboard for CO-OP and make steam remote play work with this game would be nice.
– Real player with 10.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark Fantasy Shooter Games.
Dragon Blaze is a pretty good shooter, but it is one of the more difficult ones. I can withstand a lot of bullets, but Dragon Blaze is over the top. The game plays smoothly and is responsive at 60fps. Once again, the developer has created options for us to make it through an old school shooter such as unlimited continues, extra lives, etc. without throwing our hands up in despair. Allowing the Dragon to be released provides additional strategy for providing more offense. You’ll need the extra help.
– Real player with 8.6 hrs in game
Brightness
Brightness is an extensive single-player game that takes him to the cruel ruins of ancient temples.
The main character has to recover stolen souls hidden among dangerous traps. The stolen spirits of the unfortunates levitate helplessly in the darkness of the ruins, waiting to be saved.
Brave adventurers will have to avoid hidden traps and jump over treacherous gaps to retrieve what has been taken.
Be warned, you only get one attempt and failure will cast you to previous location.
Unlock Even More Difficult Levels
Complete the available levels and open even deeper and more dangerous corners of temples, where more exploration areas are located.
Return to the Past
Go back to completed levels to improve your achievements and become a dexterity master. Improve your time and the number of points you have earned.
Discover Undiscovered
Take the gameplay to new biomes by completing the previous stages. Along with the new terrains comes new challenges. Get ready to be surprised!
Read More: Best Dark Fantasy 3D Platformer Games.
MISKATONIC
HARRY POTTER BUT IT’S A SCHOOL FOR MIDGETS INSTEAD CAW CAW
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
MISKATONIC is a Free VR game. It worked on my HTC Vive system, played ?, sounded ok, looked ok. It needs more room in your playspace than it requires, button required to start playing is a reach too far. Has a tutorial room, with instructions but I don’t know how to pronounce the words used for the 3 spells. Reads like the 3 spells are audio activated. Supposed to be a wave defense game where you can blast flying demons, use a shield to protect yourself and make stuff levitate. You are rooted standing to a point on floor, and yeah it is for midgets, so you are looking at inside your body if you are tall.
– Real player with 0.2 hrs in game
Triple Dungeon
Big fan of the original Touch Dungeon. Now it’s back on Computer where you get to play not one, not two, but a whopping THREE games at once. You Do The Math!!!!!!!!!!!!!
– Real player with 2.6 hrs in game
Conceptually this was a good idea, but the execution was poor. All three dungeons are exactly the same, you just have to play them at the same time. Overall it was an enjoyable experience, and well worth the $2.00.
– Real player with 0.5 hrs in game
Darkness Maze Cube - Hardcore Puzzle Game
Amazing game!
any mistake ends up leading to your death, pay attention to every detail. test your skills and memory, solving puzzles and trying to stay alive every second.
Participating in the closed test was such a great experience,
now I’m trying to improve my score!
– Real player with 197.0 hrs in game
Amazing!
I participated in the closed tests and it really is a game for those who enjoy challenges and strong emotions …
Not taking the save and dying … makes you think “Why, why didn’t I go to get the save first?”
The team is to be congratulated, the game was thought of details, paying attention to the paths, sounds and details of the environment really helps to prevent traps.
I took several scares … rsss
Very cool!
Congratulations!
– Real player with 42.8 hrs in game
SOL DIVIDE -SWORD OF DARKNESS-
SOL DIVIDE! The game that first got me into Psikyo shmups! With City Connection and Zero Div doing all these Psikyo ports, it’s like just shut up and take my money! What perfect ports too! A company after my own heart. I have such a personal connection to these games…thank you!
– Real player with 19.5 hrs in game
“Sol Divide” is a difficult, boring game with bad animation, poor 90’s CGI graphics, flimsy story, forgettable soundtrack, and with almost nothing to do. There are few variances between enemies and even fewer differences in how they attack. Gameplay is suffocating given the size of the sprites compared to the available screen space. Getting hit is practically unavoidable; the challenge is whether you can hang on long enough before advancing to the next level.
The developers have done a great job, as usual, including the option to tune difficulty, lives, and continues to your level of skill, but this doesn’t save “Sol Divide” from its poor design.
– Real player with 1.5 hrs in game
Dungeon Deathball
Fun tactics game. It plays like into-the-breach-lite.
What this game does better than into the breach:
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Every turn is more connected. Enemies can only move a small amount and won’t jump across the map and target something else unlike ITB.
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Enemies can be manipulated easily; A big part of mastering the game involves manipulating enemies which is really fun
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The orange monsters and goalies chases the ball
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Cyan monsters that chases players.
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You can stand in an enemies attack range to make them attack you the next turn
– Real player with 102.7 hrs in game
Quick note: My actual playtime at the time of writing this is closer to 8-10 hours, as I’ve been playing it since the first public demo on itch, months before Early Access release.
Dungeon Deathball is a compact, turn-based strategy game, in part inspired by Into the Breach - it shows you exactly what enemies are going to do next turn and also allows you to turn them against each other by pushing them around. Unlike ItB, it’s a very easy game to pick up and play a quick round or two while on a short break.
– Real player with 45.2 hrs in game
S.U.M. - Slay Uncool Monsters
“Yo, wassup. Just came out of a session of S.U.M. and it was toootally tubular. Think ya know math? Think again bro. Yo momma don’t even know how to multiply with 3 variables. Me? 4 variables, 4 operators, no sweat, sweet cash in return. See ya past the last dungeon, loser”
I can just imagine this unironically being a future banner for the game (unless it already is).
Jokes aside, there is definitely an engagement aspect under its pixelated aesthetics and the playability that made me come back again and again just to do what essentially are basic math operations. There’s more to the gameplay though with the whole grid aspect. Despite much of it being behind paid DLC, there’s still plenty to do in the meantime until it starts feeling repetitive.
– Real player with 12.8 hrs in game
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– Real player with 10.4 hrs in game
Skeleton King
best dollar game on steam!
– Real player with 7.0 hrs in game
Fun game. I initially started playing this to beat my friend, but i beat the whole leaderboard. I have become the true skeleton king.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game