Recent reviews by Giodyne

Jumping straight into the gameplay you notice its a bit dodonpachi inspired with its hyper mechanic, hit counter and collecting stars. The game has about 8 stages with suitable difficulties for beginners and veterans. As you can tell, the game's story is mostly about being put into another world where you are now in a shmup. The anime style fits quite well with it and the guitar music throughout the stages is pretty awesome. I will say that I originally didn’t like the vibe of the game, I don't know what it is but I couldn’t get into it as much as I’d like. Nonetheless, I still gave it a triple try.

The game offers 4 different ship types. You have your main straight shot with good speed, wide shot with slower speed, and your special shot types with your shot facing the direction you might be going in or a shot type with different advantages in shielding. The core mechanics of the game offer a hyper that can only be used when focused and you cannot unfocus to move around when activated. I’m assuming the devs wanted you to commit when you are using hyper. You can also use bombs to clear a wave or when you are in a sticky situation. I would be careful though, the bombs don't give you any invulnerability whatsoever which is a little disappointing. Shielding is a barrier that allows you to block bullets for a short period of time, after you run out of shield you must collect more crystals. Throughout the stages you’ll collect temporary shots like spread shot, homing and bouncing.

One issue I had with the game is that even though I turned down the voice volume it didn’t turn it off fully when obtaining a different shot. As mentioned earlier it would have been preferable to have a small invulnerability when bombing, especially when all enemies can clip you from behind. Personally, the game's tempo even in the maniac difficulty felt a tiny bit slow. It felt like the bullets were somewhat floating. The game is not bad. It's actually pretty decent but I wouldn’t say it's my most favorite either. Even though the game is not for me, I would still recommend it to those who are looking for a casual shmup experience.

Holy crap, this game is great. I have a soft spot for twin-sticks and have been itching for a game similar to nex machina and well damn this is it. It’s Gorey, flashy and downright intense.

The game has about 5 stages but each stage is relatively long (about 10 to 20 minutes or so) and just throws everything at you. You can customize your shot type and armor. Unlocking it all afterwards is similar to a rogue-lite. Most of the load outs come down to personal preference which can make someone else's run seem unique and fresh. You have to actively reload at the correct time to get a better shot, you can also melee to reset the ammo while simultaneously gaining meter for your second shot and lastly you collect blood gems to get your special shot out. The game will throw countless waves and everything fits so well.
I legit got a blister on my thumb the first day because I was playing for such a long time.

Another cool thing is when stunning enemies with your special shot you can just straight up melee their back dark souls style creating this cool animation. The game has a variety of difficulties but make no mistake even the first difficulty can get intense on stage 5. The main appeal of the game is speed and how fast you can kill an enemy. Always encouraging to challenge you and your friends on the leaderboards for fun. I love this game. Please try it!

COME FORTH THY ROYAL SOUL

USG, a hand drawn vertical shoot em up made by Pollapee, the same dev that made F.L.E.S.H.

The gameplay is pretty quick and for lack of a better term “crunchy”. The shooting and killing sound effects are pretty satisfying which stayed consistent from their previous game. The gameplay is simple but can also be a bit of a challenge later on. Two buttons, one being your shot and the other being your bomb. In traditional mode you can choose a power up of health, bomb or after defeating a main boss you can choose a different shot type. It’s important to note that shooting enemies for score will not give you an extends (1ups) like in other shmups. This is why the upgrades are important. There is also a freestyle mode that allows you to stack these upgrades for more chaos.

The game offers a focus setting for those who are used to the traditional “hold for slow shot” style in most shmups. If that's not your thing, the default is without it. A nice touch is allowing the player to have either less or more visibility of the hitbox in the settings. The game is a bit on the short side for a shmup (15 mins) but that's fine with me, as long as the shmup is good. Take it with a grain of salt but there is only a minor issue I have with this game. When overwhelmed with enemies, the in game music and the sound effects will effectively break. I couldn’t tell if this was just my computer being weird or the game doing it on purpose? Who can say really.

Overall, the game was pretty enjoyable to clear. Check it out :)

If you would like to check out my clear of the game here as well!
https://youtu.be/7ce4388_jhM?si=_OfUaqelcnYd8zng

SocerialBladeCannon is a vertical shoot em up where you fling around a sword.

The gameplay has you choose between 3 different shot types. You have your traditional forward shooter, wide shot and laser. The game focuses on switching between your first and secondary shot to be able to break certain parts of an enemy. These parts will give you sword badges to build your sword meter. Depending on how long you want the sword to be out you can hold the sword button to charge it. It’s really good in tight situations but make sure not to get hit or else it will use your sword automatically and waste all of your meter instead.

The game has two difficulties AC-MODE and EX -MODE which are essentially normal and hard.
I did a clear on the normal mode this time around and did a couple runs in the hard mode. The game also offers practice mode which is always nice in a shmup. The artstyle is nice and the music is quite fitting. By the way, when you throw around your sword in this shmup prepare for some crunchy ass noises when destroying ships.. It's hilarious. It reminds me of every doujin shmup that just blasts their sound effects over the music.

My main issues with this game is just personal preference but I feel like in EX-MODE (hard mode) the shot types are all a bit too slow for my taste, it’s probably cause I'm so used to shmups having a focused and normal speed in one shot type but all of these characters have one fixed speed. Not only that but it feels like you can barely do any damage if you don’t play NELPHA. Again, probably just a skill issue from me lol. I am definitely not a fan of shmups that display as vertical but when you move far left or far right it displays more of the playfield. This causes for turrets or grounded enemies to be able to shoot you slightly off screen. I’m also probably just getting old and blind but I wish there was more of an hue or indicator about your hitbox. The developer probably wanted to stay true to how the hitbox actually looks in game but i don't mind having a hitbox look bigger than it actually is.

Overall, I’d give this one a thumbs up despite feeling a bit indifferent about it. Why? Personally I enjoyed playing this game and getting the clear but beyond that I’m not much of a score guy so there could be something there. I’ve seen others enjoy it and therefore I can tell it can be something for both beginners and veterans to partake in. Check it out if you like.

UFO50 is a collection of 50 games that give off an 8 bit aesthetic with a variety of genres to play from.

I’m only writing this because this game deserves an applause from me. I originally was just buying it cause I saw that it had about 4? Or 5 shoot em ups in there and I had to know how long or how good they were. Turns out these cute little games are pretty decent. I have yet to try every single one of the games but it's so cool that some of the “epic” games they have feel like full-fledged games. Some games even have multiplayer as well.

I’ve played and cleared through two games in the shmup category called Star Waspir and Caramel Caramel. These two games, while a little short for a shmup, made me appreciate the effort they put into each category. The music in those games are pretty banger. I’d imagine it's the same for the others as well. I have a video if you would like to see the game.
https://youtu.be/pM-CjOJldLU?si=4GqyHqgtxKQz2r8d

I’m a sucker for these kinds of games with 8 bit aesthetics and will be dumping more hours.
Excuse me.

If you have time please check out the game :)

life in the fast lane

EDIT: I think it's time I write something more serious for this game. I've gotten to level 66 which is the max level and got all the achievements. The game is a pretty cool racing game but it honestly suffers from lack of marketing/ it's price point to newer potential players. This turns the game into something niche where despite the active player base being low it still gets full lobbies during active hours.

I'm no stranger to games that turn into "discord lobbies" but to others that's not the case. The devs heavily state that they won't put any microtrasactions or future paid content into the game. Quite rare these days to not have that which i respect but I wonder if it's a little bit why the price point is sorta high for some. I believe they were trying to go for the way games used to be back then, just a straight up good experience. I'll still continue to play it from time to time but I feel like they don't mind if this game "dies" as it was a passion project anyway.

Mirage Feathers is a cute rail shooter where you fight as the character Notari to prove your superiority in the feather program over other aircrafts.


I’m gonna keep it short and sweet. This game is very enjoyable. The artstyle has that cute anime style look. The gameplay has that intense feeling that some rail shooters tend to give when the difficulty is amped up and some pretty catchy music! The mechanics of the game is relatively simple as your main help will be OVERDRIVE. Overdrive is everything as it burns meter from dodging and burns meter whenever you use a special weapon shot. The game is fairly challenging as the player wants it to be but if they don’t, there are upgrades you can do before you start a game.

Story mode is the scripted mode that consists of 15 stages and allows you to choose difficulty easy,medium or hard. After you complete story mode the game unlocks endless mode which is essentially a roguelike that can amp up the difficulty and even provide special enemies. I’m assuming most will play this mode for score. As for the artstyle and music, I definitely like the way the game looks ( yes im a sucker for cute em ups) and props to whoever provided the music. ( I think it's cool that there's always that one royalty free track in shmups that indie developers put on, if you know you know. It’s always a banger.)

The game is pretty cheap and shouldn't take too long to complete/1CC if that's your thing. Only complaint I’ve had so far is when I got the clear my saved data suddenly disappeared. Probably a user error though. The game has nice accessibility options for control schemes as you can use the mouse, keyboard or controller. I stuck with controller this time around as opposed to shmups where I use a keyboard. A rail shooter seems more comfy with a controller.

If you have time please check out the game :)

Road Punk Mayhem is a cell shaded shoot em up by Panda Indie Studio! The shmup has 3 pilots to choose from and 5 stages to go through!

I’m going to get straight to the point. I’ve played many of this dev’s games such as project star ship x or even z-warp. The game shares similar things from those previous shmups such as being able to teleport to avoid bullets and being encouraged to use your bomb frequently. The things I like about this game is the cell shaded art style and how you can abuse your bomb to kill enemies fairly quickly. I’ve tried all 3 pilots and found the only real difference is the speed of the ship. Of course they have their own different shot types but I couldn’t find a damage difference besides the lady pilot regarding her open shot. There are some personal issues that I have with this game.

Now of course, this is just how I feel about the game so others may feel differently. You’ll have to get used to the cooldown period of when you can teleport or bomb. These two things are tied to the same button. When you hit the teleport button you must either reach a threshold which will teleport you to that area or you hit the button again to place you in a specific area. I wasn’t aware of this at first and I’m sure the game told me so I apologize for my blindness. You must actually hold the bomb button to initiate a bomb and this can take around 1? To 2 seconds which again, will take some getting used to as you will need it to kill some enemies quickly.

Now that was just my personal gripes with it but as a whole the game does not have difficulty options. The game in the beginning is pretty easy and it drops extends (1UPS) throughout stages quite a bit. It also drops power ups and almost feels like you MUST get all of them in order to defeat the final boss. You’ll eventually realize your bomb actually is powerful and perhaps a bit more useful than your teleport. The reason I say this is because you gain a small amount of I-frames when bombing and can slip through a pattern in many instances. Once you encounter the final boss bombing is essential. During the final boss encounter, you will get the boss to low health and realize your engine is failing. If you fail to bomb the boss early on your engine will explode resulting in an instant game over. Now I don’t have an issue with a game mechanic like that as many shmups have challenged me to death. What I don’t like is the instant change in difficulty only at the end. It would’ve made more sense if when your engine failed, it would explode and delete one or even two of your lives instead. Perhaps this wasn’t the vision of the dev and that's perfectly fine.

Either way I still enjoyed my time with this game and it’s fairly cheap. I kinda hate giving it a downvote as I am only really mixed and wouldn't say I don’t recommend it. I still think its a nice shmup to try, it's just not my cup of tea.

dont hate me Matt!! :(

Fingun Forever! is the sequel of Fingun which was previously a boss rush game with cute aesthetics. Fingun Forever! expands on that and now has a full 9 stages filled with comfy gameplay, a cute artstyle and catchy music!

A game that pokes fun at strip em ups. You shoot clothing off the bosses to do damage but never really go overboard with it. The greatest part about Fingun Forever! Is that it doesn’t take itself seriously and you can tell by the cute artstyle. While both Fingun games have large player hitboxes (for bullet hell standards) that make regular bullet dodging challenging, this sequel adds a dodge mechanic with slight invincibility. This feature sounds generous, but it is definitely not free and should be used for niche situations. I believe it works well on dodging bullets however it doesn't seem useful if you’re avoiding enemy hitboxes.The game involves you saving all the “waifus”. This will give you more score and depending if you fail or succeed to collect all the waifus, the game will give you a different stage boss. The game also extends through 9 stages instead of 7 if you decide to travel to a different ending.

The music is pretty catchy and upbeat. The art also reflects this sentiment by being very cutesy giving a feeling of happiness or silliness. It offers unlockable art in the gallery which are for those looking for something a bit more spicy? lol. I found myself doing multiple runs just to be able to see the different kinds of bosses and also what was required to obtain a true ending. The game is quite simple but honestly because of how upbeat it is, It made playing it over again feel quite enjoyable. The game from a beginners perspective might seem a tiny bit tough at first, but you’ll find it’s very generous by giving you extends when beating a boss.

I’d say if you’re someone that likes simple cute em up games then you should give this game a try. It’s a really silly game that can offer that chill casual shmup experience you’re looking for. I definitely enjoyed my time with this one.