Astral Gunners

Astral Gunners doesn't quite fit my shmup preferences, but you can really tell it's had a wealth of design and heart poured into it over its long early access. More than a solid horizontal shmup with distinctly varying level styles, cute and strange bullet patterns, and of course careful scoring mechanics, there's also some distinct gameplay features to play with. Especially notable is how each character has, in addition to a meter-requiring special that clears bullets, a defensive button (with a simple, relatively short cooldown) that gives them some tool for avoiding or preventing a few hits. Naturally, you'll find higher difficulties throwing even denser and crazier bullet patterns at you to push your defense, but this still adds a layer of active play to the general fighting as well as some very distinct differences in how characters feel and function, as the same patterns have different meanings to each character. The "system hacks" system is also quite a clever addition. There are two basic ways to play the game, each with its own leaderboard space: one is straight arcade where everyone is on the same base footing, and the other gives you a series of option points where you can (after unlocking) slot some special modifier. For example, when you use your special and charge your multiplier high enough to trigger overload status, a mini-boss you slot will come in and support the fighting with whatever thing it does. That's an advantage over arcade mode, and it gives you a choice on how overload brings some extra benefit. These aren't terribly exciting upgrades, but they do let you change up the play and alter the base difficulty (and auto-special plus auto-defend are major difficulty reductions that should make the game accessible to anyone who wants to let it handle defense and just shoot things). Good for players that need some extra help as well as those that just want more variety and some knobs to adjust, and without taking anything away from the core arcade design (or its leaderboard), which others may prefer. System hacks used to be called "power-ups" so if you see references to this having power-ups, note that the game does not use power-ups in the normal shmup sense. It's just choices you set outside your run. Your ability/power doesn't really change as you play a run (and so doesn't drop down when you die, either). Another aspect of variation: levels don't come in a fixed sequence, and the order you choose to attack levels has some effects, like something from the previous level showing up to lend you aid in the next. I shouldn't neglect to mention the generous training mode for practicing levels you've cleared, and while the initial experience with the game can seem quite overwhelming and loss-heavy, the game does clearly want you to see all of it. Your first run will have no continues, or example, but if you play "easy" as intended, you'll unlock power-up options and more continues, which will get you a clear, a new character to play, and send you on your way to normal and hard with your basic boxes checked. Even if you prefer throwing yourself at the crazy levels exclusively to coasting through for easy wins, I'd recommend playing the lower difficulties a bit to knock out those early warm-up achievements, and locate the three collectibles in levels when there's less insanity flying at your face. I find the art and visuals overly busy/detailed/bright for how much stuff and how much sheer motion there is on screen at times. You can see from the store page and trailer just how animated bullets, pickups, and such get. Definitely feel my eyes just defocusing now and then from the blur of shiny details. [strike]If you're migraine sensitive, while there are is an option to reduce bullet glow, you'll still have the pulsing bullet throb animations flowing all over the screen, and those will probably be a deal-breaker.[/strike] [i]Edit:[/i] Option to disable bullet throbbing added in the first post-release update definitely clears the migraine aspect and noticeably helps the overwhelming detail, so good on them for that upgrade. I also wish the slower focus movement weren't quite so slow. You're quite fast when you're fast, and barely even moving when you're slow. Needing to use speed control so carefully has some interest, but since your slow movement also has shot/control consequences, it's not great to need to use it in such detail for such different things. Character speeds vary, though, so you do have some preference space. I wouldn't consider it a serious negative concern, and the slowest characters were made that slow because some people prefer that play, so for some it could be a positive. All-in-all Astral Gunners is fun, distinct, and worth play, and it's great to see additions to the scrolling shmup field, especially since horizontals are so under served, despite the obvious shape of the screens in front of us :)

This might be game of the year

Outstanding gameplay and scoring mechanics. Top Tier!

Very fun! Way more challenging and rewarding than any souls game. You can't just pad your stats when you get stuck. Time to lock in and git gud fr! 💪 Works great on my steam deck!

I remember seeing this game and playing it in it's first few steps into this world at the Gaylord hotel years ago, and only just not came around to getting it as of it's recent release. Though I must say this is still a very wonderful game, a delightful and challenging bullet hell game. Fantastic.

This game has great fast paced chaotic game play with intense and epic robot shooting action and a great soundtrack