Destruction of Heavenly Bliss

June 20, 2026 - There was an update pushed that fixes the soft-locks I was experiencing. I jumped back in to try and kill the mission 10 boss. And... I realized if I kept trying to kill it my review would turn into a negative. It's truly awful. There's so much green that it's hard to avoid the incoming green attacks. The boss casts this lightning thing, shoots missiles, tons of tiny bullets, and does this 3 laser attack that severely limits your movement. I understand that this ought to be a difficult battle, but this is just infuriating. Fully upgraded and damage to the boss is still too low. Half the time I can't see what I'm doing properly because everything is some shade of green and it all blends together. My attacks are green which hide the incoming green attacks.. Aside from this large circular thing I launch. Anyway, definitely not jumping back into it because this final boss is just an exercise in extreme frustration. Still keeping it a recommendation though, because I still feel mostly satisfied. At the time of this review, 2:12 pm PST(19 June) I am unable to finish the game due to some bugs. I've posted about in the discussion board, so I hope they'll be fixed. So... Aside from that, how is the game? I feel pretty mixed emotionally. The storyline is alright, you're an AI that's been developed and then misused. You get angry. Kind've like AM from "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," which is a fantastic short story. Gameplay is the typical shmup experience. You're in a ship, you shoot things during a level that culminates in a boss fight. You die, but you get to use data points earned during your run as a method of upgrading yourself. Lots of upgrades and you legitimately feel stronger as you unlock things. But... Well, there are like... 4 actual levels. It all blends together in my head so I can't be 100% sure. You have 3 main bosses. A floating orb thing, a big ship, and a snake style monster thing. There's a presumably final boss, but the game crashed while fighting it and I've been unable to reload that mission or boss fight :/ There are at least 10 missions to complete. They all follow the same pattern. Not much enemy variety, boss fights range from being very simple to Bullet Hell and Spongepants McGee's Terrible No Good Day. Bosses from level 7-10 are bullet sponges. Even the sponges have sponges. Without enough upgrades I cannot fathom that anyone would keep trying to fight them. The boss fights are not engaging enough to be so sponge-like. The repetitive nature of the levels makes sense from a narrative aspect. It's not a fun time though, because eventually we start to see diminishing returns during our runs on account of how expensive upgrades can be. The graphics have a nice retro vibe, and the music is great. Nice tempo and it ramps up to make boss fights feel legit. In the end I'm kind of bummed about the bugs I ran into. Bosses simply failed to show up during a run and I'd have to start over... Just to see they still wouldn't show up. I ended up editing my save file to show those bosses were reached so I could skip the level and go straight to the boss. That worked. Mission 10 was completely broken for me. It crashed half-way through the fight with the boss, and further attempts to get into the mission just resulted in being sent back to the upgrade screen with a ton of audio issues. All of that being said, I did like it. I don't know that I'd jump back into it even if the bugs are fixed. This was always going to be a game I'd sit down and play with the goal of completing in one sitting. Since that's certainly not happening, I'm just going to move on to something else.

A glorious repudiation of the evils of metaprogression in a lovely audiovisual package, and a challenging (but not impossible) bullet hell shooter to boot!

Really liked it. Honestly, it could have forced me to take more time. Would love some sort of extended way to play like some "unlimited" mode. I was not expecting a story and it was good.

It's a good game. I like shooting things. Visual style is very nice. I think the progression system moves a little too fast once you find the double bits upgrade. But that just lets me shoots more things even faster. Solid game to spend 2 hours on.