Recent reviews by cyriak

If you are into shmups and watched the trailer, you'll be pleased to hear that this game really is as good as it looks.

The game itself is fairly short, but every second has so much stuff happening you won't care about that. Casual shmupers playing for survival will find normal mode quite forgiving, especially when bombs can be used to give you a free shield. Playing for score is what this game is really about though, and that involves point blanking and sacrificing bombs to go into "boost" mode. Essentially the difficulty is self-determined by how much risk you want to take for the rewards, but there is also hard mode and "inferno" if you want more challenge.

A very fun and well made shooter

Chaotic vertical shooter with a very interesting art style. This game is quite welcoming to beginners, or those of us who have been playing these games for years and still aren't great at them. Can't really judge how much pro players will enjoy it, I'm just here to make stuff explode, and there's plenty of that to keep me entertained.

You can choose from a bunch of ships that each play slightly differently, one of them can be customised as well, so you'll probably find something that suits you. Along with traditional arcade mode there is a "chronical" mode which has some meta progression going on if you like unlocking things and levelling them up.

You are encouraged to play quite aggressively with point blanking and bullet erasing, and things can get a bit sensory-overload at times. I like that myself, but if you don't then there's options to adjust the graphics to make things more clear.

Anyway, very fun game.

Simple and fun "vampire survivors" type game, with charming 8 bit visual style and gloriously goofy text. Lots of game modes and things to unlock. Gets crazy busy, I would recommend finding the options for putting outlines around enemies/bullets/etc.

Old school arcade shooter with very faithful emulation and all the extra features you would want: boss practice, rewind, lower difficulty, autofire (thank god), etc. There's a decent scanline filter if you want the authentic old tv screen look. The presentation is fairly minimal other than that, which is fine by me.

I'm guessing that's all anyone reading this will need to know, but if you aren't familiar with Truxton/Tatsujin its a shooty spaceship game from the 80s. It has a rather brutal checkpoint system and speed ups that go from stupidly slow to stupidly fast, and powerups that dont power up until you collect 5 of them. By modern standards the gameplay is kind of harsh, but the design is absolutely iconic. Its a piece of shmupping history and if you are into shmups then its well worth the price for that reason alone

Really fun twin stick shooter with cool visuals and a casual style of gameplay. While it does get tricky later on there are a variety of items you can combine to help you out, and the game seems to give you more of them if it feels you are struggling, so I would recommend it for players who like shooters but don't have godlike skills. I managed to blunder my way through the main game in 4 hours, but there are extra challenges I haven't tried yet, and i have a feeling there might be more secrets waiting to be found.

Old school shooter that brings back memories of the 16 bit era. Nothing complicated, just stuff to shoot and bullets to dodge, but its pure fun. Cool soundtrack too.

You get a special attack that recharges over time, and a whole bunch of different ships to choose from at the start, each with their own kind of weaponry. Some even have shields, which is nice for us lesser skilled players. And a teleport.. which feels a bit strange in a shmup, but I'm sure it can be put to good use. You'll have to ask someone else about the scoring system, it has chaining and whatever, but I don't really care about that stuff. I'm just here to make things explode.

Nice colourful shooter. Not to difficult. Random power ups and bosses, plus a darius style route selection so every game is a bit different. As well as normal mode there is a boss rush and time attack, and a hard mode that unlocks once you've beaten the game. Fun for a quick blast while you are waiting for your oven chips

If you are a fan of this game series then you will know what you are in for, and I don't think this game will disappoint.

The difficulty is just as harsh as ever, with some added trolling for good measure it seems, but you can take a few more hits now and there are loads of checkpoints, so you should be able to die your way through it eventually.

There are a lot of nostalgic nods to the old games which is very cool if you grew up with them. The art style was something I wasn't sure about before playing, but it actually looks pretty good, so don't let that put you off. But yeah, get ready for some hilariously unfair deaths.

Updating this review now that the game is out of early access. I've spent a lot of time in this destructible world, getting killed in countless interesting and haphazard ways. The basic game involves journeying down through several different zones to meet the final challenge at the bottom. On the way you pick up wands with random spells on, which you can edit to create all kinds of combined attacks. There are also a lot of mysteries to explore.

The chaotic nature of the game makes each run its own different adventure, which is what keeps me returning to it even though a lot of the deaths feel kind of unfair at first. Some new players might find it a bit frustrating, and I would recommend trying some mods to lower the difficulty if that is the case. After a while you learn to avoid most things that will kill you, though you will still die in stupid ways. You'll just have to be philosophical about that. I'd also recommend checking out some videos about wand editing, it's kind of complicated at first and you will need to build some powerful wands to survive the later levels.

It's totally worth sticking with it though. It took me about 90 hours to beat the boss for the first time, and there is a lot of other stuff to see and do besides that.

Fun dungeon crawling rogue-lite adventure. It draws some comparisons to Binding of Isaac but the combat style is closer to 2d zelda, with your axe serving as both sword and boomerang. Jumping is a nice addition to the gameplay, I use a controller so dunno how awkward that will be for keyboard players, but they get better aim with the mouse so its all fair I guess.

Difficulty can feel a bit tough, but you are expected to keep dying and saving up your gold for permanent upgrades to your gear. Being early access the game has more content coming, I've still had 40-odd hours of fun out of it in its current state, so got my moneys worth for sure. Looking forward to seeing how it progresses.