I wound up getting this one at the winter sale's last couple hours on the look-out for more shmups/bullet-hells to try out cuz I've been getting really into those. The screenshots were utterly incomprehensible and it only made sense to me once I checked the trailers but I was already on board given how utterly confused I was beforehand, it's very rare for me to not know the gist of a game based off of screenshots.
The description cites Super Hexagon and Touhou as inspirations and I think calling this a combination of those is probably the closest approximation you could make to any other game, besides that, this is completely its own beast.
You move automatically on a circle in the middle of the screen, all you can do is click a button to switch from clockwise to counter-clockwise and vice versa, p much exactly like Super Hexagon but without being able to stop your motion.
Projectiles come in from all over outside the circle and depending on the type, it will either disappear once it reaches the middle or phase through it.
There's also enemies which is where your attack comes in, you slash at whatever is close to you every time you turn and automatically shoot at whatever is closest by. You can also adjust the aim by holding the button which slows down your movement, it's undoubtedly a lot to get a total grip on and it's great when it actually works out.
Despite having stages that are divided into three Spiral chunks, the whole game is contextualized as a series of puzzles that need to be solved one at a time.
You get a checkpoint for each one you clear (the goal condition is either to just last long enough or drain the HP of whatever boss is looming over the level) and can immediately start over when you die, it's a really neat system and it shows how much work is actually put into making shmup level design work and look so visually dazzling at the same time.
The music's very Touhou, all super symphonic melodies accompanied by some guitars and piano, it rules.
It also lifts from Filipino mythology as well as some Greek mythos which is really neat, I'll have to look into some of the bosses later and see what their deal is cuz they got really cool designs.
It's still in early access and I haven't beaten it yet but there's a decent chunk of stuff already here, the campaign seems like it's about 5-8 hours long but there's a ton of difficulties to unlock which I might check out afterwards.
Regardless there's obviously a ton of passion being put into this and you can feel it, it's absolutely exhilarating. Reminds me a lot of the kind of passion I feel from Silver Dollar's games where they just put out what is at its core a fairly simple game that is ridiculously hard to master and just cram it with stuff, I love it and I really hope to find more devs with this kind of vibe.
The description cites Super Hexagon and Touhou as inspirations and I think calling this a combination of those is probably the closest approximation you could make to any other game, besides that, this is completely its own beast.
You move automatically on a circle in the middle of the screen, all you can do is click a button to switch from clockwise to counter-clockwise and vice versa, p much exactly like Super Hexagon but without being able to stop your motion.
Projectiles come in from all over outside the circle and depending on the type, it will either disappear once it reaches the middle or phase through it.
There's also enemies which is where your attack comes in, you slash at whatever is close to you every time you turn and automatically shoot at whatever is closest by. You can also adjust the aim by holding the button which slows down your movement, it's undoubtedly a lot to get a total grip on and it's great when it actually works out.
Despite having stages that are divided into three Spiral chunks, the whole game is contextualized as a series of puzzles that need to be solved one at a time.
You get a checkpoint for each one you clear (the goal condition is either to just last long enough or drain the HP of whatever boss is looming over the level) and can immediately start over when you die, it's a really neat system and it shows how much work is actually put into making shmup level design work and look so visually dazzling at the same time.
The music's very Touhou, all super symphonic melodies accompanied by some guitars and piano, it rules.
It also lifts from Filipino mythology as well as some Greek mythos which is really neat, I'll have to look into some of the bosses later and see what their deal is cuz they got really cool designs.
It's still in early access and I haven't beaten it yet but there's a decent chunk of stuff already here, the campaign seems like it's about 5-8 hours long but there's a ton of difficulties to unlock which I might check out afterwards.
Regardless there's obviously a ton of passion being put into this and you can feel it, it's absolutely exhilarating. Reminds me a lot of the kind of passion I feel from Silver Dollar's games where they just put out what is at its core a fairly simple game that is ridiculously hard to master and just cram it with stuff, I love it and I really hope to find more devs with this kind of vibe.