Cube Gothic

This game is difficult, yes, but that's not the problem. Unfortunately, there are several. The save system is wildly inconsistent with how often it lets you save. Get through a hard area? Beat the hardest boss in the game? You're not getting a save point for another hour. Hope you don't have anything to do. The "puzzles" are occasionally nonsensical, and many of them involve math while you're being shot at. One boss had colored squares hinting at which number goes in the slot, but as far as I could tell they didn't mean anything. The first minesweeper puzzle occasionally has wrong numbers, and if you hit two mines you start the stage over. There's one with a bunch of flying numbers that fails you at the end for shooting the wrong ones, and I still don't understand what the puzzle is or why some numbers are wrong. Also, the game is more of a bullet hell than a SHMUP, and most of the writing is wonky and full of misspellings. Presumably translated by a novice English speaker, but I can't give them too much fault. It's not terrible, and it's more art project than game, but if you try it make sure to use Alpha Beta Gamer's playthrough if you get stuck. I really like the art and the style, and the game is unique. If they added more save points and fixed the "puzzles" that are wrong or make no sense it would be worth playing.

Overly pretentious. Not really that interesting. If you like a challenging scrolling shooter, then you might like it.

I find it hard to believe I only have two hours on record when it feels like I've spent a dozen times that. That's just the kind of game this is. It is an enthralling artpiece, with art the best kind of biomechanical horror where the spikes and the skulls and the monsters only enhance the very human element. This is a game about a mood that cannot be described with words. The music is beautiful and haunting, where every piano key in my favorite track "Legion 52" sounds like desperately throwing white paint to make stars on an endless black canvas. If you are prone to melancholy or wistful longing, you may suspect the game is not for you. I must emphatically say that it absolutely is the game for you. Games as art. Beautiful and sad and dark and uplifting art.

Visualmente muy atrayente pero pésimos controles. Terminaras odiándolo por sus malos controles.

Very nice game actually, the best one from that developer. The art is fantastic and very unique as always. As for gameplay - I say it's pretty cool as well. Some ppl say in their reviews that the game is very hard to the point it gets unfair but personally I did not find it too hard, and I am not a SHMUP veteran or something like that. Maybe it got nerfed by a dev at some point, but I dunno. Some sections are harder than others but overall the difficulty seems okay, especially if you (unlike me) realise quick enough how your special ability actually works (spoiler: it is a shield). Game has tons of creative stuff and never stops to surprise you. This goes for visual design as well as for gameplay that is a mixture of many genres (including minesweeper-type of puzzles, lol). My only complain is that sometimes the dev goes way to deep trying to look innovative and weird. I mean 50% of story in a game is shown as a reversed text and honestly that looks stupid and a bit childish.

[h1]Euroshmup com visual enigmático belíssimo mas no final do dia ainda é apenas um euroshmup [Eng and Pt-Bre review][/h1] Jogo extremamente bonito e intrigante mas janky demais. Não adianta ser um jogo bonito ser no final é apenas um euroshmup. Todo o texto do jogo é escrio invertido e a fonte é estilizada demais para ler de forma eficiente, forçando o jogador a tirar prints e inverter a imagem no paint para tentar entender o plot do jogo (e o texto nem te ajuda muito a entender o que passa). Controles são bizarros, o jogo não se explica, a dificuldade é absurda e de forma injusta. Inimigos com hp enorme, seu hurtbox é gigante, seu tiro é apenas uma pequena linha na sua frente e fraco tornando o combate irritante (é melhor apenas tentar desviar de tudo), inimigos enchem a tela de tiros pequenos difíceis de enxergar nos fundos coloridos, o jogo salva ao final de cada fase, se você chegar no boss com pouco hp já era, pois ao morrer você renasce no boss com o mesmo hp que entrou na fase do boss. Eu queria muito gostar desse jogo, mas se for focar no visual e contar de histórias, talvez seja melhor usar um gameplay que não seja tão irritante, falho e punitivo ou simplesmente não ter gameplay. [hr][/hr] [h1]Euroshmup with beautiful enigmatic visuals but at the end of the day it's still just a euroshmup [Eng and Pt-Br review][/h1] Extremely beautiful and intriguing game, but too janky. There's no point in a beautiful game if in the end it's just a euroshmup. All the text in the game is written in reverse and the font is too stylized to read efficiently, forcing the player to take screenshots and invert the image in Paint to try to understand the game's plot (and the text doesn't even help you understand what's going on). The controls are bizarre, the game doesn't explain itself, the difficulty is absurd and unfair. Enemies have huge HP, your hurtbox is huge, your shot is just a small line in front of you and very weak making the combat irritating (it's better to just try to dodge everything), enemies fill the screen with small bullets that are hard to see against the colored backgrounds, the game saves at the end of each stage, if you reach the boss with little HP, it's over, because when you die you respawn in the boss with the same HP you started the boss stage with. I really wanted to like this game, but if you're going to focus on visuals and storytelling, maybe it's better to use gameplay that isn't so annoying, flawed, and punishing or simply have no gameplay.

I really like the art style. I think a couple of the puzzle solutions didn't make sense at the end, but it could just be low IQ on my part. It can be hard at times but nothing crazy; sometimes you end up with too little health to get through a floor, but you can just restart the game to go back a couple floors. The hitboxes were weird at times and the backwards text is just dumb lol. I have no idea how long it took because I left it on overnight to keep my progress. If the gameplay and art look interesting then I would recommend it.

incredible art, bad gameplay, i recommend Angel at Dusk if you want a similarly esoteric but much better shmup gameplay experience, also the dev's most recent games use generative ai unfortunately

do your times tables :V

Artsyle is top-notch and gameplay is challenging as always, but not as hard as previous games imo. Play this if you want a one of a kind experience.