Gunboat God

Super underrated. - Great replayability: High scores, speedrunning, lots of different playstyles and strategies to try for each level, and an ultra-difficult "Dread Mode" with unique player buffs to challenge dedicated players. - Great mechanics: Movement is smooth, technical and expressive, gunplay is satisfying, and customisable progression with a large weapon and ability arsenal. - Fun world/flavour: The game biomes feels coherent and the player's main companion, Yeti, is a fun character. The main thing this game lacks is mission variety. A lot of the missions feel samey, and some stretches can feel boring to get through. It usually picks up with some curveballs after that though.

I found Gunboat God to be a fairly enjoyable experience, but certainly not a stand-out in the shmup genre. The game gets full points in terms of artistic direction, which is certainly what pulled me as the simple black and white palette allowed for really fluid animation and gameplay despite being a small indie game. Each weapon certainly feels really satisfying to use with a maxed out firerate (based on your current combo) leading to some solid fast-paced action. This game was also on the easier side for me, although it's worth mentioning there's a hard mode unlocked pretty early on that I didn't play. I was able to beat every normal level and challenge, however I also passed on doing full perfect ranks because the requirements seemed a bit too demanding for some levels. Ultimately I simply liked my experience, not loved it. There are over two hundred levels and the backhalf of the game really slowed down for me; while there were constantly new enemies being introduced, repeat levels became too numerous and it felt more like checking off a list rather than throwing myself at new challenges. I also wish the music packed more of a punch given the genre, but what we ended up with was fine. I do think Gunboat God is worth recommending to other fans of the shmup genre, there's solid execution here that I think is worth playing, but unfortunately I found it more to be of passing interest rather than active adoration.

Addictingly fun, challenging, and unique in a few ways. I honestly thought going into this that it was going to be a pretty straight forward platformer-esque run and gun. Yet literally just the title screen slapped me in the face like the game meant business. Genuinely love the minimal aesthetic using silhouettes rather than fully detailed art, it gives it a cartoon-ish vibe that kinda owns itself, while being rather expressive through gestures and exaggerated movements I couldn't help chuckling at. The game sort of pacifies the player into thinking "This will be easy" only to smack the controller out of your hand within a few levels. There is using screen real estate, and then there is this game using every little detail to convey information from the waves forcing movement to keep you from staying still, to recoil offsetting you enough to make you feel like you're fighting not only enemies, but the obstacles, water, and hazards themselves. Yet somehow has such extremely tight controls that it's difficult to blame the game for mistakes. It reminds me of an old game I once played called "Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet", but with a lot more cartoon-ish flair and it's own identity. There were certainly some levels in the game that made me feel it needed some tweaking, but the Dev seems quite open to feedback and even addressed one issue I had rather quickly. Honestly can't see a reason not to give the game a try if you like run and gun + platforming with mechanics that push you to improve. I had an absolute blast from beginning to end, and dread mode is gonna be chaos I can tell, and I'm here for it.

Shoot and Shoot More, This game is an barrage of shooting missions to get upgrades to make the next missions easier or the past missions completable way faster, This game is a great shooter but the other part of the game is all about dodging, jumping, and general bullet hell shenanigains of trying not to get hit by the monsters as well as the lake its self, this is a good game for people that want to hear a constant dopamine hit of cannons blasting, and fast movement, And Yeti is a cutie.

うーん、アートスタイルは良いが、移動方法が制限されているせいか武器が増えてもやる事が変わらず少し単調気味か。更に、操作がサクサクで気持ちいい反面、マップのいたるところにダメージを受ける障害物があるのに、1回でもダメージを受けると最高スコアが取れなくなる事からイライラ棒をし続けているような悪い緊張がある。 移動、攻撃の気持ちよさがあるので今後に期待

已100%通关（普通模式） 量大管饱我说不准，但如果你是一位追求极致的成就型玩家，这款游戏有着200关左右等着你打满6星。 核心机制有趣，堆量诚意拉满，除了小部分关卡设计有问题+激光过于全面超模以外，这款游戏就是无暇之作，单看这像素美术就能让人裤子湿润。 哦对优化也有点小问题，如果卡顿的话把背景模糊关掉就好。

solid game bro

Great graphics and animation, smooth gameplay and lots of variety in mission types. It's a bargain, too. I'm ♥♥♥♥♥ at it.

Pretty cool and fun game I finished in (mostly) one sitting. Artstyle and music are good. Gameplay is fun and in a better life I would have probably tried to finish Dread mode as an opportunity to test skill I've not used on the main run. One of the cool things that worked for me really well is that game tells you about some system via dialogue at certain points and it seems to happen when on average you would have enough resources to meaningfully engage with the system (this happened to me with skills). Surely worth a buy I think, however, there are few things I can critique. These are not really that big, but addressing them would probably make it a better game: 1. Glint is absolutely busted and at the same time is kinda boring to use. It carries you through the entire 3rd world until you find an even more busted Dynamo. After that point if you've got skill points you cared about, you can <solve> the game by building up charge with glint and then switching to Dynamo and stunlocking your screen. If you add submarine stun there, game becomes mostly trivial. 2. In normal mode there is no good reason to ever use vaporizer -- it breaks flow to open wheel, and you are forced to open it again after usage or you are griefing yourself by effectively binding fast switch button to "disable shooting" toggle. 3. I didn't really like juggling missions. They are few (3 I think) and all felt wrong somehow. Probably a cute gimmick for few levels, but thank god there are just 3 of them. 4. Protect Yeti is sometimes obnoxious: he can wonder into the spikes causing you to not be standing on top of him. If game decides to spawn enemies at that time and Yeti decides to move to the direction opposite of where I'm standing, Yeti usually just gets hit by enemy spawning on top of him (they hit screen border at the same time). 5. One-shot enemies have no tutorial or it was easy to miss. Considering that game gives you hints/tutorials for pretty much everything, it is a bit unexpected. 6. I have no idea why shield exists when it is an inferior version of the ghost. Not sure if it is fixable and maybe there is a use in dread mode, but it felt really strange to get it. Upgrades do not seem to make it more interesting either

fantastic game but like so many others in the genre, the difficulty increases suddenly and exponetially after the first readibly enjoyable and accesible levels have been completed (it happens around level 15 on 'regular' difficulty) Thankfully, there are accessibility options that allow one to adjust the difficulty. The downside is that using them disqualifies players from the leaderboards. It would be great if the game supported separate leaderboards for different difficulty settings as others do. Beggars can't be choosers as it would seem that this kind of uneven difficulty progression is the norm in modern games: early levels ease you in, then the challenge spikes sharply, eventually drifting into a kind of tedious grind regardless of genre. I digress. The game is fun and the settings allow for accessibility tweaking so that casual and unskilled players can enjoy this experience as well. I can't help but be reminded of The Gaslight District (GLITCH animation on youtube) with regards to both the aesthetic and some aspects of the worldbuilding.