Seems I'm late to the party for this game, I had no clue it released in 2014. Regardless, I played Kero Blaster for the first time today on my Switch and beat it in only three hours. Its a simple arcade style game that follows the run and gun formula mixed in with platforming elements, similar to a Mega Man game. You even get more weapons later on in the game that you can experiment with, though with all of them you can only aim straight in front of you or upwards. A big part of Kero Blaster's charm in my opinion is the visual style; its very simplistic with little to no detail and it almost looks like an Atari 2600 game but with sprites that aren't blocky, which I feel looks cool. The soundtrack is great, too, and it emulates the sound of retro games nicely. Kero Blaster has excellent controls, I've never felt like I was screwed over because of the way it controls. Overall, its actually a pretty challenging game, too. It wasn't quite as difficult for me as other retro style indies I've played, such as Cyber Shadow or The Messenger, but I did still die quite a few times. Everything still felt fair and achievable, in part due to the many upgrades you can buy for your weapons. These upgrades make the game much easier, but its balanced out by the fact that the prices of upgrades ramp up quite dramatically after you've already bought the cheap stuff so you have to wait a while before you can afford the other items. The game has a few progression unlocked upgrades, as well, such as the coat that lets you take one extra hit and the jetpack that lets you double jump, which I felt were neat additions. The jetpack in particular was nicely implemented into the level design, although I found it a little awkward to have to stop dead in my tracks to propel myself straight upwards instead of at an angle. It does make sense for it to work that way, though.

I feel its worth noting that there's an extra mode called Zangyou Mode that you unlock after beating the game normally, which seems to be some kind of hard mode. Chances are that I won't be playing that, since there aren't many games that I replay, but considering how short this game is maybe I'll give it a shot later.