I'm frankly shocked at how much this game gets right. It has only a single mode and no difficulty settings to speak of (rare for a shoot-em-up these days), balanced to near-perfection with available strategies for both curious new(ish) danmaku players as well as for genre experts and score-heads.

How it works:

1. Drain enemies' "souls" with your rapid shot.
2. Drained enemies are more aggressive, letting out more complex bullet patterns, but they also trigger bonus points (which scale with a multiplier) when you kill them with your laser.
3. Increase the multiplier by collecting skulls
4. Collect skulls by hitting enemies with your rapid shot and building up a circular 'meter' around your character sprite. Once the meter is full, release it, and the circle will slowly shrink; and any and all bullets within it will be turned to skulls.
5. Collect items by lasering over little stars in the environment, bumping up your circle meter by around a third.

That's basically everything. It sounds more complicated than it is, and, honestly, you could play the game without engaging with those mechanics at all, just doing pure shooting and dodging... but you'd be missing the risk/reward incentives that elevate the game, in my opinion, from standard-fare to special.

On top of all of that, it looks fantastic, with no visibility issues to speak of; and the music fits the psychedelic vibe perfectly.

Overall just a real pleasant surprise.