Aesthetically interesting and I appreciate going for a radically atypical structure for a shmup, but unfortunately Swag is honestly one of the worst of the genre I've played. The structure of the game, focused on a single, long, semi-randomized stage is interesting and has potential for a score attack game - and that's all that's good i have to say.

There's just absolutely no meat on the bones here. There's such a limited amount of enemies and layouts that it got old before i finished my first run, and what's there isn't even interesting. The player themselves has a pretty cool arsenal and playstyle but there's just no good encounters or any reason to not just do the same thing for the entire duration of a run. And the conceit of the game itself - basically just being a single stage score attack - practicaly amounts to being a long, boring Caravan stage with some pretty neat aesthetics. There are bonus modes in NES shmups with more to them than this $30 release.

I hope RS34 can just lend their weird energy to better games in future.