Everyday Shooter
This is a very strange game, that I personally love, but I’ll admit it’s not for everyone. It has some very unique artistic and musical sensibilities, and even its game design is pretty far outside the norm for shoot’em ups. The game actually gets easier the more times you replay, because you earn points to unlock things like extra starting lives. Each level follows vastly different logic and behaviors for the enemies, that keeps the game feeling fresh with each stage. And while the challenge is intense, it’s not really about winning, so much as existing in a state of focused flow while immerse in such beautifully strange visuals and the hypnotic music that synchronizes perfectly with it.
– Real player with 10.2 hrs in game
Read More: Best Music Bullet Hell Games.
I’d rather call this an interactive art project than a game, without the negative undertones that are usually associated with such. Here, not only do you get the audiovisually interconnected experience, but the shmup gameplay itself is tight and reactive as well. I really liked the unique mechanics in each stage that offer a different challenge each time if you want to start racking up points in addition to just surviving. Then you have a range of other elements to complete the package, like the retro-ish low poly aesthetics, the awesome music, the signature bullet hell chaos and the giant bosses that feel super satisfying to beat.
– Real player with 9.8 hrs in game
Beat Hazard
Before reading: this review is about Beat Hazard Ultra, meaning the basic game + dlc. While I still recommend Beat Hazard on its own, it is more simplistic and lacks online co-op that the Ultra version provides, so I strongly recommend this game to be played with DLC.
Beat Hazard Ultra is a fast paced space shoot’em up with bright colorful graphics. At first sight it does not look like much, however it has several features that have made it one of the most pleasant surprises in my library.
The graphics look amazing at first, they tend to tire out your eyes pretty easily however, so it is not recommended to play for long sessions. There is an option to scale them up (!) or down inside the game menu though.The battle is fluid despite the abundance of color, enemies and the genral chaos that takes place on your screen especially on the higher difficulties. I have even played this on a linux netbook -yes it plays on linux and mac as well- with minimal capabilities and I was honestly surprised at its smoothness. Gameplay is fluid as well, regardless if you are playing with a controller or a mouse and keyboard. In fact, I even find myself preferring the mouse and keyboard mostly because the mouse provides more precise aiming than thumbsticks. The difficulty curve is just right, meaning you can choose from 5 different difficulty settings (easy, normal, hardcore, insane, suicidal) and play in whatever mode you feel comfortable with. This makes the game equally enjoyable for both hardcore shmup players as well as people who are new to the genre, or not particularly skilled. There is also a nice “perk” system implemented, where you can buy upgrades, such as a few special attacks, more multipliers, etc.
– Real player with 56.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Music Colorful Games.
I have played Audiosurf for a long time and I was not sure if Beat Hazard was a game that could stand out for me as a music-based game. I finally decided to give Beat Hazard a try after it was available for several years on the market. It feels like a game inspired by the classic game Asteroids, but with songs from your music library playing while you control your spaceship. So the basic premise of the game is you maneuvering a spaceship while avoiding asteroids and many enemy spaceships of varying types and sizes. There are many games of this genre in a crowded market, but Beat Hazard carves out its own identity with its challenging action and allows you to take on numerous enemies and other hazards as you enjoy the rhythm of the songs of your favorite artists and built-in songs.
– Real player with 46.3 hrs in game
Solar Core
Solar core is a top down twin stick shooter, where you must reconquer the galaxy one core at a time by surviving waves of rhythm based enemies.
Each level plays out based on the beat and intensity of the music and the goal is simply to survive until the end of each song.
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Choose one of six different ships/characters, each with its own unique abilities and playstyle
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Different types of enemies and bosses that all act based on the beat of the music
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Original soundtrack
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Local Coop
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Xbox controller and mouse/keyboard support
Read More: Best Music Bullet Hell Games.
ORBIT
Grab a friend ASAP and go play this crazy space brawler! It’s a perfect game for those cozy saturday evenings with pizza and local multiplayer games. Insanely polished and highly recommended for everyone who’s into fun. 3
– Real player with 12.5 hrs in game
ORBIT (by 4bit - see what they did there?) is a fantastic game to play with up to 3 friends. Highly polished mechanics, great visuals and an amazing soundtrack make it a wonderful party game.
Orbit is original, fun, and extremely well made. I cannot recommend this game enough!
– Real player with 5.5 hrs in game
Lithium City
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Lithium City is a wonderfully atmospheric isometric twin stick action game. You play as a female warrior working her way higher and higher up in the city towards a final battle.
The game utilises guns, melee and thrown weapons and at times you will need all three. All will need to be used and due to the scarcity of ammunition you will frequently have to change weapons on the fly. Shooting is tight and easy and the various guns have the weight you’d expect. Even when everything feels far too hectic you can usually get back on top with judicious weapon use and occasionally running away! The controls are simple shoot/stab/punch with one button and dash with another, that’s it. Though the dash can be a little imprecise at times.
– Real player with 7.5 hrs in game
A lot of people are comparing this game to Hotline Miami, which is true in a way. You enter a room with a pre-set enemy placement, and try to kill everyone in there, learning and adapting to where they are and what weapons they drop and the best way to plan your assault through it.
That being said, there’s a few stark differences between the two. Hotline Miami is focused more on larger levels, entire floor plans and buildings you have to clear out, whereas Lithium City has smaller rooms. Lithium City is a bit shorter, and each level has more of a specific concept it goes with, whether it’s utilizing moving floors or defending a single room with waves of enemies running in. The biggest complaint I have in regards to gameplay would be that Lithium City is short, with only six chapters it shouldn’t take you more than five hours to beat. Which is fine, for the price, but I found myself wanting more stages that were fully open, which don’t really come in until near the end of the game. It’s also isometric, which works really well with this kind of gameplay.
– Real player with 5.0 hrs in game
City of Beats
Explore the ever-changing skyline of a city driven by music 🎵 in this rhythmic rogue-lite shooter. Get into a zen-like flow state during combat, where every action is synced to the beat. Shoot, groove, loot, upgrade, repeat.
Plan your route through procedurally generated expeditions on the city map which doubles as your skill tree.
Encounter fierce enemy resistance on skyscraper rooftops and meet citizens of the city such as financially-challenged repair drones and shady hardware merchants.
You suck at rhythm games? We’ve got you covered. It’s not about continuously pressing buttons on the beat. Instead, the music helps you enter a flow state so you anticipate enemy move & attack patterns, which are all synced to the beat. Listen and learn to perfectly time your dodges, special attacks & skills, as you shoot out the melody with your weapons.
Between expeditions, upgrade your character & hovercar to gain an advantage for your future runs. Unlock new classes, weapons & tech and get closer to your ultimate goal: hunt down and eliminate a rogue AI called The Zeitgeber.
Tormentor❌Punisher
Review Update
I have had to come back and edit this review.
When I made my initial review, I was only about 1h into discovering and enjoying the game. As you can see from my play time now (currently 67 hours) I have completely fallen in love with this game. And I’ve gotten damned good at it to, but we’ll get to that soon enough.
Let’s rewind to the beginning.
I say with some sheepishness now, that I initially judged the “intensity” of the game’s aesthetics and marketing to be a bit of a gimmick. The swearing and outlandish presentation gave me a bit of an eye roll. I’ve played and beaten a great many crazy-hard games from the original Serious Sam on Serious difficulty on down the line. As a gamer that dearly loves a fair but punishing game, I have grown weary over the years of various games that would promise insane amounts of action and intensity, but generally deliver broken game design or tediously easy games.
– Real player with 329.9 hrs in game
This is without a doubt, my favorite arena shooter I have ever played. If you have ever liked Total Carnage, Geometry Wars, Smash TV, or really any other top down omnidirectional shooter, you owe it to yourself to give this a try. It even has local coop, for those of you always searching for new couch multiplayer games.
Tormentor X Punisher is a score attack and leaderboard centric arena shooter focused on nonstop action, (you reload your machinegun by shooting your shotgun) where everything dies in one hit including all bosses, and yourself. It’s great for the “just one more round!” effect because matches will last at most 5 minutes, and it takes about 7 seconds to go from dead, to being in a new round.
– Real player with 73.8 hrs in game
Groov
Please buy this game its so cheap and regularly goes on sale, its a great value and the Dev is super helpful on steam and twitter.
Fun game. I’m so glad it came to Steam I loved it when it was on Xbox Indie Arcade back in the day. Has a lot of replayability.
The price is great.
The game play is great.
The sound design is great.
Cannot go wrong with this game. If I were rich I would gift this game to everyone on my friends list.
EDIT: After this review they added a bunch of online Leaderboards so it got even better!
– Real player with 6.9 hrs in game
Remember Geometry Wars? It’s similar to that but with Music at its core instead of bright explosions. I kept my 360 solely for this game, thats how great it is. Years ago, I’d get home around twenty after four from work and fire this game up. It was easily one of my favorite ways to chill and wind down after a long day. The game isn’t deep, but it has a lot of depth. 3 basic modes, the last 2 being locked until you beat the first mode.
Gameplay
The game takes place in a 2d box. Your a little spaceship(that always reminded me of The Last Starfighter) and every enemy is a musical instrument. Some enemies only need 1 shot to kill(or trigger their instrument) while others, aka The Romulan looking ship (the rapper) requires numerous hits to kill. There’s numerous waves which are all different. Each wave presents more difficulties than the last. There’s changes in your weapons, rate of fire, enemy population and variety, and a lot more. Later in the game, some pretty crazy things happen, which are pretty exciting to encounter and play through. You only get 3 lives. Theres no restart from checkpoint. So getting to the end is an amazing feeling. Its very reminiscent experience to playing old games at the arcade. Theres definitely a lot of strategy and you’ll learn through your play though how to attack each wave. However, I always called them Shells(guitar), can and will ruin your day. They can go out of the play zone, and come back in. They only take one shot, but when youve been backed into a corner or running a wall and your trying to get out, having a shell sneak in behind you is frustrating. Especially when you seconds to the next wave.. It is very easy to get swarmed and overwhelmed so here’s a couple of beginner’s tips.
– Real player with 2.1 hrs in game
Beat Blast
Nice concept, but boring overall. There’s a few things that keep me from recommending this. First off, the music has virtually no impact on the game other than the speed at which you shoot. You’re going to spam notes in every cell as you unlock them, so there’s no point in finding creative layouts. It’s also clunky how you set up your notes in the bottom left corner of the screen while trying to dodge enemies.
The music is cute and bouncy, but the game visually is incredibly dark, which doesn’t match. There’s no reason to have the “fog of war” aspect, it doesn’t change anything gameplay wise except make it feel claustrophobic. The art would fit better if it was a white background, or if they removed the fog of war and made enemies glow brighter similar to Geometry Wars. The screen can become cluttered very quickly, and hostile and friendly projectiles share some of the same colours so it’s hard to tell what’s going on at points.
– Real player with 36.8 hrs in game
A fun roguelike, Beat Blast is one of those games that you throw a pair of headphones on and simply forget the concept of time, ‘least until you realize you lost track of it and today has become tomorrow… The music contrasts nicely with the dark atmospheric theme, the light of you, the player, pitted against your enemies; a quite literal display of light and dark (or this gal read too much into it, your call I suppose). I always dive back in when I see a new content release, albeit in the name of fairness one could probably get all the different items after fifteen hours or so (I like to take my time, or meander about, if you prefer). I’ve unlocked everything but still find myself going back in, and getting occasionally surprised by things like a new alternate boss.
– Real player with 19.9 hrs in game
Beat Hazard 2
We all enjoy listening to music. But when was the last time you played your music? This is Beat Hazard, an intense twin-stick space shooter powered by your favourite artists and songs.
Bigger. Better. Brighter
Beat Hazard 2 builds on everything that made the first game successful—then takes it to the next level. For example, the new “Open Mic” system detects and uses the audio output from your PC. This means you can play to literally any music source. YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music? Everything’s supported. Feel like some karaoke? Plug in your mic and start singing! The game uses ACRCloud Music Recognition to detect and identify your tracks automatically and update scores to a track leaderboard where you can compete with other players. The visuals have been overhauled with new art and a gorgeous 3D lighting system. Crank up that visual intensity to 300% and enjoy the carnage! Encounter massive procedurally generated bosses created by your music.
– Real player with 786.2 hrs in game
_I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to be positive about this game, until I got to finally play it.
For someone who didn’t play the original Beat Hazard before, I can easily say that it’s really fun game._
Beats powered by YOUR music! EMBRACE THE SEIZURE!!
Beat Hazard 2 is a music-driven arcade shooter where you pilot a spaceship that fights ridiculous amount of space junk asteroids, other battleships and numerous intimidating flagships while listening to the beats of music pumping through your ears.
– Real player with 136.6 hrs in game