Bullet hell, no controller support. Arrow keys move your ship, Z shoots to the right, Esc pauses, and the mouse is used to navigate the menus. That’s it; no bombs, no power-ups, nothing fancy that you might be used to from other SHMUPs. The game saves your progress after each level, and there’s an option to replace the eyesore white grid background with actual images, but that’s as fancy as it gets.

Still, the level design is pretty fun. There’s a decent variety of ships and shot patterns, and while there are a few cheap hits every now and then, it never felt like I died too much. Plus, the game gives you the option to give yourself infinite lives, which I recommend regardless because the levels are kinda too long to have to redo the whole thing just because you lost your last life at the boss. The levels promise alternate/harder versions of themselves if you complete certain optional objectives in previous levels, but when I replayed the game to do just that, I didn’t notice much–if any–differences, so I wouldn’t call this game replayable.

That said, it was fun to play through the first time, and its base price is only one dollar, so I can recommend it. You can buy the game here: https://happy-frog-games.itch.io/flashover-megasector