Astral Gunners

Astral Gunners feels familiar right away, but secretly surprises with clever mechanics. You choose from five different characters, each with unique shot patterns and special skills, which keeps it interesting and varied A handy plus is the ability to repeat levels in training mode, so that you can perfect that one timing or route For anyone who likes rankings and high-score hunting, the ‘System Overload’ mechanic offers extra depth Graphically it is simple, sometimes a bit too minimalistic against the background or with bullets. This occasionally results in some recognizability issues, but after a few runs you hardly notice it anymore. Musically it is very good: the heavy metal soundtrack by Sami Sati with guest guitarists gives extra energy to each stage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcaKwetanU4

Astral Gunners is a fantastically designed shmup that bleeds with style from its wild and colorful character designs, blossoming bullet patterns of vibrant colors to a blood-pumping metal soundtrack that pushes you through a selection of stages. The western cartoon style shouldn't throw you off-guard here; Astral Gunners is an authentic hori shmup. Lots of unlockables including new characters with sweet new abilities as well as earnable extra credits to extend your playthroughs keep you playing after each death, as well as a high score system you can continuously push yourself with. Aside from their stylish comic appearance characters are diverse in their abilities. Each one has a slightly different firing pattern, and very unique special abilities that change the entire dynamic of how each character plays and defends. In multiplayer the synergies of these character specials work together incredibly well, and obviously have had more than a bit of thought put into them. Despite the non-conforming shoot 'em up presentation here everything about Astral Gunners is authentic in its arcade roots. Bullet patterns are challenging and unpredictable and score chasing is tightly designed, precise and addictive. It may not be what shmup people are used to visually when it comes to an arcade shoot 'em ups presentation and that just makes it more unique and interesting, but everything else here is pure, palm-sweating, score-chasing action through a plethora of well-designed and interesting stages and a heavy as hell soundtrack that keeps you focused and engaged and feeling like you're back in the noisy and stuffy arcades of the 90's. Highly recommended for fans of shmups, score chasing, or new takes on badass arcade action. This is one I'll be coming back to beat my past scores on regularly. For more unique, abstract, arcadey and retro indie game recommendations check out [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6857352-Cue-Review/]Cue Indie Review[/url], the indie game [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6857352-Cue-Review/]Cue-rator[/url]

I cant believe how much content and mechanics is packed into this absolute BANGER SHMUP. you OWE it to yourself to BUY THIS. DO IT NOW. ITS AWESOME!!

This game is an amazing piece of work! From music I would listen to outside of the game to the beautiful design, it makes the gameplay even better! A good amount of playability with the different characters and levels and playing Local co-op with a friend is super fun using different ability combos to overcome the variety of bosses! 10/10 game and I look forward to seeing more from the developers in the future!

High quality horizontal bullet hell with high replayability, tons of unlockables, great ship variety to play with, multiple difficulty options and very creative bullet patterns / encounter design. If you're into hori shmups like Deathsmiles, Akai Katana, Progear, Rolling Gunner, etc. you'll probably have a great time playing Astral Gunners. Also, the soundtrack is FIRE and I love the "3D captured turned into 2D" animation style, which reminds me a lot of how some CAVE games were animated. Great game, recommended 👍

This is a shmup, so let's get to what matters: -game is VERY fun to play, and the level/route choices, different characters, and the way they impact scoring means it's very fun to replay as well -the training/practice options are basically as robust as possible, and from what i've seen, it seems like you can practice basically any segment of any level/boss you want to, immediately and with no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥/waiting. it's going to make going for really high scoring runs much more comfortable -music is fantastic. if you're a fan of tony macalpine or joe satriani (or akai katana's ost), you are gonna be in heaven -it would take me too long to get into the particulars of all the mechanics/how scoring works, (also i'm still unpacking it myself), but suffice to say that there's something here for everyone. there's even mini-caravan sections in the levels based on how quickly you clear waves, with evasive enemies that increase in value if you kill them consecutively without them escaping. you can select the order of levels, and there are optional/bonus "challenge levels" you could choose to include in your route, and "tasks" in each of the main levels that if completed successfully summon an ally on the subsequent level you choose (different allies do different things so there's some strategy involved on choosing the order of levels). just lots of stuff going on, some of it essentially unique to the shmup genre as far as i know i could keep going but instead i'll just end with this: if you are a fan of shmups, you'll likely enjoy this game a lot. buy it!

[quote]Just saying, but I do have a curator page. If like my remarks about games, you can find more of them here: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/44130985-TDP%27s-Gaming-Escapades [/quote] Astral Gunners is a game that was generously provided to me through Steam's curator connect. Curator connect is a frankly useful system that is unfortunately abused to hell and back, with many developers mass-sending their putrid garbage to curators that they know will give them guaranteed positive reviews instead of actual feedback. I, for one, have gotten insulting games at times through this system; from coughing simulators to asset flips. Astral Gunners is the first game that I have gotten through curator connect that was sent by a competent developer that actually cares about the product they are making. And honestly, I loved every minute that I spent with it. [h2]Very positive first impressions[/h2] I have to say, Astral Gunners is a game that really doesn't shine unless you see it in action. The cartoony art direction is very nice, but you won't truly appreciate it until you play the game and see that the same amount of care has went into the animations as well. Each of the characters, enemies and bosses have smooth, cartoon-like animations with some little things that make them special; like how each character on the selection screen has an idle animation or how different bosses behave after phase change or defeat. The same goes for the OST. The metal soundtrack is very well-composed, but you won't truly appreciate it until you realize how the music tracks progress alongside the levels and end when they end. As for the gameplay, Astral Gunners follows usual design philosophies of shmups, with some additions of its own. The game gives you five different characters (with different personalities and dialogues) to choose from, each with abilities taken straight from the ships in other shmups that make them wildly different to each other. One of the characters relies on melee attacks and parrying, one allows you to reflect enemy attacks, one has a screen clearing bomb, and so on. This makes each run with them unique, as you'll need different strategies to deal with the challenges the game throws at you. The main game spans around 6 stages and aside from the beginning and final ones, allows you to choose the way you want to progress through them. Each of these stages come with assist characters that will help you on the next stage you attempt, or offer you extra lives to pick up. Now since each assist character works best on a specific level and lives are an important source of extra score, you have to find the best path you're going to take to get the most score out of without getting a game over. [h2]THEY. KNEW.[/h2] You know, sometimes you play a game and then immediately start to wonder if the developers were previously avid players of that genre, because some of the content they have included in their game actually improve upon the things that bugged you while playing other games. Astral Gunners feels exactly like that and has several features that are the opposite of usual shmup and bullet hell design tropes. For starters, the game refrains from using cheap methods to increase its difficulty. The game warns you if a wave of enemies is approaching from behind or if something in the environment is blocking you from seeing them if they are arriving from the front, contact damage is disabled for all enemies (including bosses) and the environment, and the enemies do not seem to have attacks that come out of literally nowhere. The bullet patterns are also pretty well-designed, being manageable and pleasant to dodge on the normal difficulty setting and then entering true bullet hell territory on higher difficulties by adding new patterns to the mix. This causes the player's skill to become more important for survival rather than pure memorization. There are also a number of quality-of-life features available in the game. There's a training mode with an incredibly high number of modifiers and settings to change, allowing you to practice any part of a stage under any circumstances. When getting into a boss fight with screen-filling attacks, a white arrow appears on the left side of the screen to tell you exactly where the boss is. The game also allows you to have alternate buttons ready for each available function, so you don't have to constantly change your button layout to use a different character. But in my honest opinion, the fact that the game doesn't take much away from casual players is what deserves the most praise. [h2]There's fun for everyone[/h2] Shmups and bullet hells are arcade games at their core. They can be ruthlessly hard at times, forcing the players to play by the rules they enforce and requiring them to invest a lot of time into learning the mechanics or memorizing the enemy patterns in order to get good at them. If someone wants to play casually, most of them don't let the players have an easier time, while others limit what they can access. And these limitations come in forms of locking final levels or bosses behind harder difficulties, disabling progression/achievements or making your score ineligible to appear on online leaderboards. Astral Gunners doesn't do a lot of those limitations and instead rewards you for playing your own way. The game does have some stuff that are locked behind specific requirements, such as the true ending locked behind 1CC completion or shadow battle achievements requiring you to be at least on normal difficulty, but it leaves you open to use assist mechanics however you want. By unlocking achievements, you get access to extra continues (up to 9) and powerups that give you extra abilities in the arcade mode. But the thing is, the game doesn't take much away from you by using those abilities. You can still earn a lot of achievements and unlock new stuff, and your accumulated score gets recorded on a separate leaderboard instead of getting discarded. This, in addition to the powerups opening the way for mixing & matching and finding out what can work best, adds a significant amount of replayability to the game. Because you are not forced to do whatever the game says and just do one thing over and over. Instead, the game gives you a bunch of tools to customize your experience and achieve most of the goals however YOU want it. This is a decision that I deeply respect as a gamer with limited time on their hands, and hope more games use it as well. [h2]I have eyes and I can actually see[/h2] In my opinion, games in the shmup and bullet hell genres usually suffer from a fatal flaw: A severe lack of visual accessibility settings. Many of the games in these genres suffer from visual clarity issues, which is the result of several visual elements of a game (like background and enemy projectiles) blending together and becoming hard to notice. And this is something that even seasoned developers screw up as well. To combat this issue, devs can introduce various visual settings for the players to tweak and personalize their experience. And thankfully, this game's developers have understood the importance of having them. Astral Gunners doesn't have clarity problems even in bullet-heavy sections, but still offers options to tweak it anyway. It allows you to dim the background up to %50 in order to make the projectiles become more visible. You can change the amount of white glow around enemy bullets that causes them to be more readable in busy scenes. You can also override the way Astral Gunners shows the hitpoints and change them from automatic to permanently visible. And combined with the enhancements made in the gameplay department that I mentioned beforehand, this makes for a very pleasant experience. [h2]TL;DR[/h2] Definitely one of the finest shmup games available on Steam with a lot of quality-of-life options included, allowing both casuals and hardcore players of the genre to find something of value in it.

This game's lots of fun - i'm gonna keep it simple with, you get unlockable characters, unlockable power-ups that change the way the game plays. If you find the game easy then play it on a harder mode, if that's still simple then try a power up to change the game play. For example you have a few unlockable slow down options that slow down the bullets if they get near you, which is good to position the bullets for better score. You have another slow down power-up to give the game the "cave slowdown" feel. I stream this game regularly on https://www.twitch.tv/brianreboot so if you're wondering how the game looks please take a look.

After playing the game for the first time on stream i loved it, The music is pronominal, the unique characters are very interesting and support all types of players, the level design is great and i love the background for each one. i only stumbled upon 2 bugs throughout the main game and the training mode, -First one was when i had beaten the first stage and went to the second one there was no audio a all including sound effects. I made sure it wasent just on my end and it was the game but just a simple restart of the game fixed the issue. -Second bug was when i was messing around in the training mode it had suddenly stopped responding to any of my inputs and the game crashed. All bugs were on stream and i can give you the exact timestamp if you would like to investigate on what happened from my perspective. A twitter dm would be the easiest way to get a hold of me if you need to, @KulozoR6

Amazing bullet hell hori. Scoreplay is so fun I've basically only seen 3 levels, too busy finding new high risk scoring strats to worry about clearing. Always a good sign. This game is overflowing with personality, from player characters to boss design. Comfortably play with a more or less standard setup like Blue, or challenge yourself to get technical and go for crazy scores with Green. Into melee attacks? You want Purple. Try them all, find which suits you. The graphics in motion are beautiful. Soundtrack rocks, stages are unique, bullet patterns are dense but easy to see. There looks to be a fairly engaging story as well, if you're into that kinda thing. Tons of attention to detail, such as the moving backgrounds of the character select images. Another reviewer mentioned mega man, I could totally see these little robot dudes teaming up with him in a saturday morning cartoon. Ok, off to chase S++ ranks.