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 Replay Value Dark Fantasy 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
Super Forklift 3000
A cool, short and cheap game. Nonetheless, there is a lot of replay value. In every try i learned something new to improve my score.
– Real player with 1.8 hrs in game
Read More: Best Replay Value Space Games.
Solid ““““space shooter”””” with original elements (try yourself). It fullfills it’s objective: to be a arcade like game where players can always improve their scores and unlock really challenging achievments.
The price is unfair. It should cost more.
– Real player with 1.4 hrs in game
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 Replay Value 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
Celtreos
One or two players. Use a mouse or trackpad, keyboard (including Touch Bar), or 1-2 game controllers.
Mac or mobile only, and updated for macOS “Big Sur” with x86_64 and arm64 support.
“Celtreos” is like the space shooters of decades past: tiny ship, big weapons, waves of foes, power-ups and obstacles.
Music, Sound and Voice
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Over 25 different songs (nearly 45 minutes of music!)
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You can even play your own music and auto-next-song for key game events
Stages
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12 stages: a city, space station, ocean and more
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Horizontal scrolling but more than one “screen” of vertical space
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Start from any stage you want!
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Each stage ends with a challenging boss
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Wall layouts and spawn patterns are partially randomized
Weapon Arrays, Special Moves, Power-Ups and More
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Choose from a huge arsenal of weapons and special abilities
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7 different ships to choose from
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Customize ship properties, such as gun mount locations and top speed
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In-game power-ups with weapons, defenses and temporary powers (like Rapid Fire)
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Power-down orbs with temporary inconveniences (like Weapon Freeze)
Additional Configuration Options
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Set number of lives, and number of times that special abilities can be used
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Play in a window or in Full Screen, and specify how much of the display to use in Full Screen
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Set graphics quality to one of three levels
Dextram
Love the game. Currently have the highscore in the gamemode classic. Try to beat me ;)
– Real player with 17.8 hrs in game
I have only played for a short time so far, but am really enjoying the game. I can see myself sinking many hours on this to climb up the leader board.
Update: This game is dangerously addictive.
– Real player with 2.9 hrs in game
EXPOSURE, a game of camouflage
A game of camouflage where you can’t see yourself. Change colors to hide, dodge predators, and survive intense bosses in the abstract wilderness of stealth non-bullet hell. Lose the ability to see where you are, and learn to feel and know where you’re going.
EXPOSURE and CAMOUFLAGE
Being out in the open is unsafe. Avoid detection to survive. Switch between light and dark forms to camouflage, but careful: you won’t be able to see yourself either.
Entrancing World
Begin defenseless, but evolve into something greater. Progress through different branching paths across 11 procedurally generated areas. Disappear into the psychedelic minimalist design and atmospheric soundscapes.
Intense Bosses
Each area introduces new predators and parasites. Everything is much more powerful than you, but everything has a weakness.
Features
Collect all the Fieldnotes. Beat the Daily Challenge. Discover the fastest routes. Shoot ‘em up without shooting. Bullet hell without bullets. See without looking. Die and evolve.
TechBeat Heart
I’m not a shmup kind of girl, but even for me, I found this game very enjoyable.
It’s hard, but also very rewarding, you simply cannot stop playing.
If you don’t have a lot of time and yet want to experience some dope gameplay, this game is for you.
(Mads is def my inner spirit!)
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Update Nov 24th: Halloween mode is absolutely amazing, you play as the spider! Revenge, finally!
– Real player with 25.8 hrs in game
At its basic level it’s fun enough to play. Controls well, things work, not buggy, etc. But as a score attack it’s really not ideal. It’s achilles heel is RNG! Bad RNG? You’ll be given a spawn far away from your reach to connect your combo, get bad weapon (Don’t pick V-Shot, please, its coverage for the sides and the back is BAD), or spawns that are more about chunky enemies than plentiful popcorns. Scoring and rougelite is like water and oil: They don’t work!
The end boss is fun enough, though and the soundtrack is nice. The fact that the game switches its music for each new run is also nice.
– Real player with 7.7 hrs in game
Grimrush
Bosses are fair with their tells and you will learn by dying and trying. Best lesson.
– Real player with 14.8 hrs in game
Full disclosure, I know one of the devs and even helped to game test it a bit.
But with that said, I’m going to try to be as unbiased as I can with this review, this is both for the consumer and the devs.
With this out of the way, let’s jump into it.
Grimrush is a bullet hell, boss rush game. There are many different bosses and 3 character classes.
Each character has different abilities and stats, catering to any kind of playstyle. I found myself personally changing classes quite often, depending on what kind of experience I wanted at the time.
– Real player with 6.3 hrs in game
Legacy of the Elder Star
One part of the game that i really enjoyed is the feel of the controls and the speed of the game. Too often in SMUPs i’m cussing at the game because controls are slow, unresponsive, and based off of memorized patterns. I would find myself getting into position before the next wave arrives. When you fail in a scenario here, it’s because of your own responsiveness and it’s easily recognizeable.
That being said, there is sufficient challenge and creativity in the waves. Throughout the levels, each one was unique and brought a different challenge to face. One thing i notice in a lot of games is that level after level is another case of ‘same stuff, different level.’ Same moves, same patterns, etc. I really thought that each level was dynamic and would build off the previous one.
– Real player with 65.6 hrs in game
What this game does, it does extremely well. The music and art style fit perfectly. I really love the mouse controls, especially when using the star dash secondary. It really doesnt feel like any other shmup out there.
It is worth noting however that there isnt much of it, I personally unlocked everything there was to unlock after running through story mode 4 times and this took me about 2 hours playtime. Once this is done you have 3 unlocked game modes to try out. I personally feel that it a little backwards to unlock practice mode to try out the levels after you have completed story mode. Gauntlet mode lets you attempt all the games bosses on a single life, this is defintitely not something I see myself doing :)
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
STURMWIND EX
Horizontal shmup, featuring modern graphics and good gameplay. Combine the use of your three weapon systems to make your way through many alien infested levels and get a high score on the leaderboards. Much like good old Axelay, if your ship gets damaged you lose the weapon in use, but you can repair it by getting the said weapon bonus item. Mentioning Axelay, the rotational twin vulcan weapon is also “borrowed” from that great old game. One annoying problem with this game is hit detection: Enemy hit boxes are sometimes unclear, especially in large ones and bosses. Moreover, there are cases you can’t tell where the actual terrain is, causing your ship to get damage. Other than that, the game has no serious bugs and runs smoothly, even on an low end system. A cautious recommendation.
– Real player with 11.6 hrs in game
Totally love this game & my experience so far its almost perfect except it would of been nice to have the original story introduction from the Dreamcast version what a shame that was left out, controllers work great & no lags & bugs so far,
but i will point out,
the charge beam is much slower at charging than the DC version of the game,.
The graphics are incredible & mind blowing, Great catchy Acid Techno sound tracks,
16 mission/stages each with a big boss at the end to deal with,
3 levels of difficulty easy,medium,hard, lots of variation & enemies, Awesome weapons that you can fire at the front & at the back,
– Real player with 10.5 hrs in game