If I may make another suggestion about the BLAEO website, can there be Previous/Next links added to our replies tab (when you click the envelope icon) like Steamgifts has? For posts, the site automatically loads the next set when you scroll down far enough, but for replies, it just cuts off after a while, making it harder to go back and check old replies to comments you left on other peoples’ posts.

Anyway, game:

• Is It Wrong to Try to Shoot 'em Up Girls in a Dungeon?
  

  53 minutes playtime

  no achievements

Shoot ‘em Up. The game didn’t want to register my controller at first, only suddenly getting native controller support after I mapped everything to JoyToKey (causing inputs to conflict), then not letting me move the cursor past the left two support units on the support select screen at first (even though it’s not like the other three were greyed out/unlockable or anything). Oh, and the game is stuck in windowed mode; no way to make it fullscreen from what I can tell (I even tried Alt+Enter). Anyway, besides your standard movement, you have a regular shot, a “wind blade” which destroys projectiles and deals more damage to enemies, a dedicated button to swap between the two support units you chose at the beginning (they shoot automatically), and a special attack which is different depending on which support unit you have equipped. There’s also no save feature; you have to beat the entire game in one run, so make sure you set aside 30 minutes or so before you start playing.

After you’ve chosen your difficulty and your two support units, the game throws you right into level 1, so it’ll take a bit of experimenting to figure out that your wind blade is based on a cooldown and can be used regularly, whereas your special attack is more finite, costing a star from your star meter to use (and I’m still not entirely sure what you need to do to get another star). Heck, it wasn’t until after I beat the game on Normal mode and reached level 4 in Death mode when I realized that the wind blade isn’t short-range; it’s just that whenever it hits any enemy, it starts to pierce through, but quickly comes to a stop and disappears (and I also suspect it only damages that one enemy, not any others it happens to collide with during the piercing animation).

The first two levels in Normal mode are okay, except the part in level 2 where it’s just a bunch of damage-sponge rhinos you have to weave around since you can’t kill them before they leave the screen. Level 3 ended up being kinda boring since most enemies just died before they ever really came onscreen; the only noteworthy thing is that this is the first level where enemies come from behind, but it’s still just two at a time. The level 3 boss has a cheap-hit moment where it throws a rock at you, which is immediately followed by scattered projectiles that don’t stand out as well from the background as the rock does (and the game being stuck in windowed mode doesn’t help). Level 4 takes this a step further and straight-up has yellow projectiles in front of a yellow background:

On the plus side, level 4 has a bit of level design: there are wall tiles that block your shots and need to be walked around, and there’s a part where a couple vertically-shooting enemies are placed behind the walls, so you need to slip past their shots since you can’t kill them. The level 4 boss shoots some tightly-knit, bullet-hell-esque patterns, but with how ambiguous your hitbox is (it certainly isn’t bullet-hell tiny), I’m not sure if it’s even possible to slip through some of them or if you’re expected to save your wind blade meter to break through and create an opening whenever they show up. The level 5 boss (the final boss) also has some bullet-hell-esque patterns, but while it looks easier to dodge them at first, the boss also has a move where it just suddenly points its sword across nearly the entire screen (no foreshadow animation, only a foreshadow frame at best), causing you to take damage if you aren’t on the far left side of the screen when it happens.

Since I felt Normal mode was kinda dull at times, I decided to try out Death mode (the difficulty past Hard mode), and the game does add more bullets without making the enemies take more hits to die, which is nice. Also, enemies come from behind as early as level 1, but it’s a wall of those black foxes that shoot fireballs at you and then charge at your current position, so you really need to know their pattern beforehand if you want to avoid getting hit. It certainly helps to justify the support that only shoots behind you. Enemies also regularly spawn during boss fights, even though the bosses all have their own too-tight bullet-hell-esque patterns this time. I never died on Normal mode, but on Death mode, I died on the level 2 boss because it has an aimed-rapid-fire move that lasts so long, you can get trapped between it and the screen boundary, with no way to escape (keep in mind the wind blade can only shoot to the right). You have 3 continues, and once those run out, you have to start over from the beginning. The level 3 boss can now move faster than you can move, making its sudden movements impossible to avoid if you’re not already out of the way (and the cheap hit from Normal mode is exacerbated, obviously). Level 4 scrolls faster on top of having more bullets (which is on top of the yellow-on-yellow bullets from normal mode), and if you die near wall tiles, the attack-up/speed-up powerups you drop on death can get stuck inside the walls, becoming uncollectable (and as evidenced by the level 3 boss, you need as many of those as possible just to have a chance on this difficulty). Level 5 was where I finally got game over because the game just kept spamming enemies; no bullet patterns, no enemy formations, just a constant stream of hazards that my shots couldn’t pierce through.

Overall, my reaction was mixed. Normal mode is okay, but it has some dull moments and cheap hits. Death mode has some neat ideas occasionally, but it mainly just exacerbates the issues present in Normal mode while adding some new ones. And, of course, there’s the all-too-common problem with Shmups where getting hit and dying just respawns you right where you are, so the only way the devs can think to challenge you is by undoing all of your progress if you die too many times; is it wrong to ask for checkpoints instead?