A City Sleeps™

The game looks great - the music is wonderful, and the aesthetic is near-perfect. But I can't get past the boss on the second level. As soon as it gets to the bit where he's basically filling the screen with bullets, and I need to dodge up+down in the middle of the screen to avoid the waves, I keep getting hit by the little bullets being fired across the middle of the screen. Also, having to CONSTANTLY hold down the right-stick while playing makes the game uncomfortable to play. (I can let go, but that stops my firing - and stops the music, which is part of what made the game enjoyable to play.) If you like bullet-hell games... No. If you're really good at playing bullet-hell games, then you'll probably love this. But as much as I want to enjoy this, I just can't. I die far too easily, recover health far too slowly, and casually develop carpal-tunnel syndrome in order to not be dead. I'm giving it a thumbs-up, because the game looks like it's gonna be amazing. A pity I won't get to see it. Edit: Apparently I'm dying on the second difficulty of the first level. Also, it seems there are only three levels... so I'm slightly *less* inclined towards thumbs-up, having learnt that. If you don't enjoy bullet-hell games, probably avoid this one.

Dreams defend the night Neon spirits test your will Hope wakes with the dawn

Tags: Shootemup & Bullet Hell Additional Tags: Delete Local Content & Remove from Library TLDR: Gimmick is you must assign ghosts to hotspots you control in a touhou game. Gets a bit too much to handle on top of the regular action. Play Beat Hazard2 instead. The game actually is based around a radial menu with right stick. Then you can use shoulder pad buttons to assign spirits to spawners. A angry spirit spawner spawns bullets that hurts enemies, while a kind one will spawn healing tablets. The game is meant to be somewhat of a tense but relaxing stroll, enjoyed for its audiovisuals, and keeping you engaged by putting you in constant threat, linking the music behavior to your shooting patterns and giving you a bunch of options and tools, giving you reasons to be defensive and guard a portion of the screen or zero in on specific enemies to take them out. After a quick run down the basic concepts such as the circle dot hitbox, the game explains how shoulder pad buttons help you swap powerups and you can then apply those powerups to nearby ... powerup factories. For example if animated with green it will heal, with blue it will attack your foes. The engine slows down time while you swap ghosts and apply them around so this can actually come in handy and be used on the fly which is nice. Foes can bulletsponge a bit and it gets tempting to use the sword which makes it near impossible to dodge bullets. The dash is also rather imprecise and not as handy as you would think. Altogether it is still an enjoyable game that uses gimmicks to make up for controls that are a tad deficient. The bosses have cleaner, better executed spellcards and the encounter design is much better than the seemingly random encounters you face during the regular stage. For an evolution on the same concept where the music actually affects your firepower check Beat Hazard. https://store.steampowered.com/app/618740/Beat_Hazard_2/

I got A City Sleeps as part of a bundle; I probably wouldn't have otherwise. It's not really my thing, so some of my dislike is simply due to that. Still, as a representative of bullet hell it's not exactly selling itself. The art style is nice, the music pretty good but I found the game play ultimately tedious. With only three longish levels, the expectation is to replay them at successively harder difficulties to unlock more stuff. But I just didn't find this interesting enough to bother doing.

I'm a sucker for music driven games and somehow enjoy bullet hell shooters, so A City Sleeps is right up my alley. It's by far not perfect but I enjoyed playing it, and regularly come back to it once or twice a year. My only big complaint: It's way too hard for my taste/skills. ^^

Twin-stick bullet-hell shooter with a unique style. I found the difficulty to be pretty brutal, and not worth the trouble needed to take in everything the game has to offer. If you're extremely into this sort of game, and pretty good at it, you might find something really unique. But only recommended for serious hard-core fans.

well the music is nice, the artwork is great, but its just all sprites and bullets. I mean really, i have no idea what bundle this got thrown in but otherwise i got myself a refund. this is the kind of game people make for some highschool project. The scrolling background gives an impression of a larger world, but actually this is just one square, stick some enemy sprites in it, make them shoot bullets and have some [strike]cursor[/strike] hero avoid them and shoot bullets back. That's really all there is to it, and well yeah, mehh