• ImageStriker
  

  76 minutes playtime

  7 of 8 achievements

Vertical SHMUP. Besides your standard moving and shooting, all you can really do is push a button to change which direction your side-guns aim (front, side, and back). There are six different shot powerups that are kinda hard to tell apart since they’re all white, but that’s it; you don’t even get an upgraded version of that gun if you collect the same one you’re using. Although the game has a lives system, you can retry from the last level you reached instead of being sent back to the beginning, which is always nice. There’s also a “Caravan” mode, which seems to be its own level (though it does reuse the stage 1 boss).

Level design is well made, with a decent variety of enemies and fair shot patterns. My only real issues are that a few of the enemies/bosses can be damage sponges if you don’t have the right weapon (and sometimes even if you do have the right weapon) and that the final level makes you re-fight almost every boss and miniboss. Plus, Normal mode started getting kinda boring around level 3, so I recommend playing on Hard mode (though even on Devil mode, I never got game over). This is one of those games that doesn’t explain what’s different between difficulties, which is always disappointing, so I’ll say what I noticed: level design and enemy HP seem about the same, but bullets are faster and more frequent (though it never gets to bullet hell levels).

Also, the game is free, so I can recommend it for both SHMUP fans and those of you unfamiliar with the genre and want to try it out.