no rush to replay it as it has a very flawed idea of 'difficulty' -- instead of the traditional focus on bullets / enemies, you'll find yourself the most at odds with how huge certain level enemies' health bars are! also, having most of the shot types fire directly in front of you doesn't really balance them well. i'm assuming the game wants you to cycle through all of them since the shot type you died with is the only one that loses all of it's power, but they all really only cover what's in front of you reliably. everyone i know who has played this game admits they only really use laser and traditional peashooter gun shot types and dont bother with the other two.

what it lacks in SHMUP balance it makes up for in OST, sound design, and graphics. stage 2 is a really amazing looking haunted house, and stage 4 and stage 6 specifically have amazing level themes.

If you saw my review of Pop'n TwinBee, you may notice that I gave heavy praise to the game's aesthetics and accessibility - Tonight, in one sitting, I played through Harmful Park and felt mostly the same - In risk of repeating myself, I supposed I should just say that you should read my Pop'n TwinBee review for how I feel about the overall aesthetic and accessibility, although I will say that contrary to Pop'n TwinBee, this game is considerably funnier and a lot more ridiculous. It's chock full of silly things for every moment that passes and it never gets old mostly due to how short this game is. This game is also considerably easier if you're able to not die and get all of your weapon types to level 4. Like, it's kinda piss-easy.

If you like silly or humorous games, and games with very bubblegum or otherwise "poppy" aesthetics, this is definitely up your alley. It may have not been obvious, in what I've said in the review so far but I do adore this game and I think you should play it. It's nice and short, and you can easily knock it out in a bit over an hour, and all of those minutes are for sure worth your time.

Why do we have hands? There are many reasons:
- Pat Dr. Tequila
- Hold the Dr. Tequila
- Cherish the Dr. Tequila
- Forfeit all mortal possessions to Dr. Tequila

Solid little Japanese schmup that is adorable as hell.

Played on the steam using Emudeck (Duckstation Standalone). Felt really solid for the first few levels, but there were some rendering issues in the last 2 levels (not the games fault though). Took a little over an hour (would have been shorter but kept dying due to the rendering issues)

Not sure what the story wwas specifically (did not have an english translation), but you fly around and are shooting your way through levels until you reach the boss. Pretty straightforward gameplay and was quite engaging.

The world is extremely well done and each level feels unique and is very detailed. There are only 6 levels, but they are solid.

Traditional schmup gameplay. You have four weapons you can cycle between and each has a special as well. They all felt unique and served their purpose.

Overall a fun little game and definitely recommend if you haven't tried it yet.

so cute AND quirky in a very real and genuine way. reminded me a lot of three separate times in my life. being like 9 and playing the genesis sonic games in my father's room w him. being like 15 and working under the table for this video game/dvd/music store where i mostly just priced items, it was dirty and dusty and the pay was basically nonexistent, the owner was like hella sexist and racist but to my 15 yo brain that just wanted to learn about everything in regards to media it didn't matter in the moment bc i just got to gawk at rlly rare stuff every couple weeks. and then like playing automata near its release date and it was the first new game i picked up since like 2013 and just being so amazed at what games could actually be when made w passion and love and not just for profits/to be consumed. all rlly important moments in my life when it comes to actually understanding what matters to me in terms of art. literal perfect length for a game like this too. usually i get sooo bored of 2d side scroller stuff bc it just never rlly ends and it's all just variations/reskins of the same layout, this is like different and special. it never gets the chance to be boring or to outstay its welcome bc it uses its time in such a smart way. and all the worlds are so cute and colorful and lively and most importantly diff from each other. there's like a weirdo carnival stage and a jungle stage and haunted castle one, one of the stages ends w a boss fight in front of a drive in theater, it's so gorgeous. and there's so many interesting characters, ice skating faeries and the flatwoods monster and frankenstein, so much life and detail is happening in the backgrounds of scenes that u go through so fast, love this <3

A comedic in style horizontal shooter that doesn't do anything that interesting mechanically and doesn't have any inventive scoring mechanics but has some great, varied, well animated, enemy designs that are different on each of the six stages and has some of the best and most lively backgrounds I've seen in the genre. Four weapons to switch between that each has their own special "bomb" attack and upgrades to make them stronger. The rapid-fire shot seems significantly more powerful but you can quickly swap between them with each having its own button. Has four difficulty settings from easy to very hard, medium was extremely easy from how powerful your attacks are, not being killed from touching the environment, and it never throwing anything cheap at you. Are some more inventive moments like where you are stuck in an elevator as boxes of oranges and apples are bouncing around to hit you and then start to break open to drop hazards at you or going into a wedding chapel where the bride's real love interrupts the ceremony and you are attacked by tears and hearts coming from the three. Fun one worth checking out.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/1518289554775543809

An exceptional horizontal cute-em-up, exclusively for PSX.

I was waffling between 3.5 and 4, as the scoring in this game is both super compelling on its surface and--at times--very annoying to actually execute. It revolves, primarily, around damaging large enemies just enough to almost kill them, and then bombing when a ton of smaller enemies are onscreen to finish them off and cash in on a huge multiplier (which increases for every enemy killed with a single "projectile").

Figuring out just how much damage to do to these larger enemies takes some trial and error, and you'll often overshoot it and frustratingly miss out on a jackpot. Luckily, there are plenty of opportunities, and you get an extra life every 500,000 points, which is extremely generous; so, after some practice, the system becomes a bit more lenient, because with more score comes more bombs, and more bombs equals more attempts at massive cash-outs. (On my clearing run I scored around 6 million points, which is 12 lives on top of those I started with!)

In addition to the addictive gameplay--in which you cycle between four different shots that have four unique bomb types--the sprites, backgrounds, and music in this game are Konami-esque in quality. Beautiful animations, a huge and gorgeous palette of bright colors, massive bosses, silly gags--it's all just as delightful as it tries to be.

There's an English patch out there, and the game actually does have a story, ridiculous though it may be; so check that out if you don't speak Japanese and want to give this a shot.