Suggestion: give us a way to manually sync stats. There have been multiple times where I’ve come here to post about how I’ve beaten a game, but my stats still say I’m an hour behind with a few less achievements.

Anyway, on to the game I beat:

• The Bug Butcher
  

  2 hours playtime

  3 of 31 achievements

This is an arcade shooter in the vain of Buster Bros. You move left and right, but you can only shoot upward. Aside from that, you can dash (which drains a stamina meter), and you have an energy meter that fills up as you defeat enemies; when the energy meter is full, you can use a special move (which special move you have depends on what special-attack item you picked up last). Your special attacks range from freezing all enemies in place for a few seconds, throwing a bunch of missiles around, or becoming invincible and a bit faster for a few seconds. Regarding your main weapon, you can get different power-ups for it that last a certain number of attacks, like electric shots that damage surrounding enemies or a machine gun that has a bit of spread. The game auto-fires if you hold the button, which is nice, but you can’t fire faster by tapping the button, which is a little bit annoying since your default gun only fires 3-4 times a second, and nearly every enemy takes more than one hit to kill (plus, all levels are timed; run out of time and you have to start over).

When you first the start of the game, the title screen greets you with a message that says “welcome back, [your steam user name].” Not a very good first impression. Starting the game brings you to the tutorial, where you’re told the controls and are met with an NPC who tells you the game’s premise before “testing your aim” by throwing coffee cups (this is the shooting part of the tutorial). Something I found annoying about this part is that the game always seems to skip the first line of dialogue right after the shooting parts.

However, the game picks up when you’re brought to the first level and you start fighting the bugs. Within just the first few levels, a decent variety of enemies are introduced; most bounce on the ground to some degree, but there are a few that fly and drop hazards onto you. In fact, this game doesn’t drag out the dull beginning levels like other games do, getting pretty hectic within these first few levels, so it gets respect from me for that. Despite this, all of the enemies are fair to fight, so you’ll be able to beat most of the levels on your first try, only dying once or twice to a few levels along the way. The only exception are some of the last few levels, which throw so many enemies at you that running out of time suddenly becomes an issue, so you have to be a bit suicidal to get in positions to kill all the enemies in time.

Unfortunately, there are a few aspects that aren’t very well designed. The most obvious one is the purple-orange orb bug: at the top of its parabola, it can either 1) shoot out bullets, 2) shoot out a couple basic blob enemies, or 3) fire a laser straight down, and there’s no indication which of these the bug will do. Since you have to be under the bug to shoot at it, you’ll naturally want to move under it right after it bounces to get the most shots in, but there’s no way for you to know if it’s going to shoot its laser or use an attack that won’t hit you if you’re directly under it. Plus, the downward-laser attack is pretty much padding anyway since your bullets go straight up without power-ups, meaning you have to wait out the laser before you can attack the enemy again (and there’s one enemy where this is its only attack, too). There’s also a few levels where the game puts platforms between the floor and the ceiling so you have to shoot the platforms out to be able to reach and damage the enemies (another bit of padding).

Despite these issues, the game still manages to be pretty fun. The only other issue I can think of is that the game is rather short, consisting of five areas with six levels each and no bosses (and each level lasts less than three minutes), but even then, you can feel the game start to become repetitive around the fourth area, so it’s nice that the game doesn’t overstay its welcome. Besides, if you want to get more out of the game, there’s an endless mode that even gives you the option of having a second player.

Overall, I would recommend this game if you’re a fan of arcade-style shooters. It may be a bit short considering it’s price, but just like Adventures of Pip (a game I used to be unsure about, but have come around to recommending), the higher price is a result of polishing what’s there instead of stretching the game out.