Drainus is Team Ladybug’s stab at a classic home console-style shmup - it’s bombastic, visually gorgeous and also somewhat fascinating mechanically in ways that would be difficult to pull off in an arcade. First off is its central absorption mechanic - your ship has a “guard” meter allowing it to absorb a certain number of bullets. This makes the game somewhat more forgiving for newcomers, and also becomes a central traversal mechanic - there are several points where unavoidable lasers require quick use of your guard meter. On top of that, it takes inspiration from Gradius’ customizable power-up system with full-on RPG mechanics - as you destroy enemies you earn “energy tanks” which can be spent on new weapons and various other ship upgrades. Said weapons can be mixed-and-matched to suit your playstyle and develop a custom power-up curve until you’re running with a ship that’s an absolute powerhouse with max power-ups, which can be immensely satisfying.

Unfortunately the difficulty is rather off-balance - it suffers from the classic shmup problem of becoming much more difficult if you lose your power-ups, which here is exacerbated by how long some of the boss fights take and how weak your base pea shooter is. It can be deeply frustrating to make a few mistakes through a stage, lose all your power ups and hit a checkpoint, forcing you to start over or enter into the longest boss fight of your life.

Despite those frustrations I still had a great time. It’s a fun experience all the way through!