Hell Blasters

This is the Bluesmobile of shmups. It may not look like much on the outside, but it's got the cop motor, cop tires, and probably even the cig lighter. Great level design & bullet patterns, a ton of modes, leader board & replays, great shmup tunes, it's all there. Great work, devs!

The sprites and music are what you see and hear in the trailer. Not very good imo but still passable perhaps. However, the stage design is very plain. Certain enemy types get reused extremely often throughout all stages and their bullet patterns are rather generic. There's no proper flow throughout most of the stages. Instead, most stage gameplay consists of waves of enemies that appear in specified intervals. However, the intervals are often so great that destroying all enemies of one wave immediately may result in a lot of downtime until the next wave appears, rather than spawning additional enemies. I understand that that's most likely designed around forcing you to keep certain waves alive longer so the chain doesn't break but I'm sure that could've been solved much better. Ultimately, I did not enjoy trying to memorize this game as most of it isn't very memorable. The characters are not well balanced. Winter (the woman) is rather underpowered while Summer (the man) is very overpowered. The leaderboard does not seem to have a filter for characters. On the positive side, the game has a practice mode, a story mode with tutorials and an instant restart feature.

While Hell Blasters may appear to be from the NES era, the gameplay features all of the characteristics found in today's bullet-hell games. The cockpit is the only part of your ship that is vulnerable, so that means enemy bullets can pass right through everything else and not cause you harm. Two ships you can select at the beginning feature two shooting modes that you may choose at the start of each stage: a wide spread for smaller and faster foes and a focused shot that deals more damage. The focused blasts also cause your ship to slow down, allowing you to avoid the hostile wall of bullets. The bomb, which clears everything around you, and a special shot, which destroys opponent bullets, are the other two weapons in your arsenal. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621863443 The special “bullet erase” ability, which may be refilled by simply hitting an enemy, is the only difference between the two ships. Winter's laser only fires a small shot in a straight path, while Summer's laser is far more useful because it is larger and allows you to move while utilizing it. If you're using a gamepad, my advice is to adjust the default controls. Specifically, place the bomb and special shot on the shoulder or trigger buttons. Both actions, as well as the two firing modes, are assigned to the face buttons by default. Given that you must release the fire button in order to trigger the special ability, delaying even a single second will result in your death. The enemy selection is quite good. They come in three sizes: small, which is primarily annoying, medium, which includes more bullets, and large, which has one extremely useful feature: when you destroy them, the explosion also erases all nearby bullets. This has come in handy many times when I've been stuck in a corner with one of those in front of me. Arcade and story are the two main modes. Arcade has five stages that must be completed in a linear fashion. A boss is waiting for you at the end, as is common practice in such games. Due to the limited design, they do not fall apart or change shape, but as you cause damage, they obtain enhanced fire rate and different bullet patterns. Since later stages fill up the entire screen with bullets, even the ones that can be destroyed with normal bullets, you quickly learn to rely on the “bullet eraser” ability to create a safe path. And you’ll want to rack up high score because that will earn you extra hit points. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621863282 Even if the arcade mode is entertaining, I believe the story mode should be the preferred choice. Its placement as the third option in the main menu leads me to believe it was added later. What makes the decision even stranger is that the story mode contains tutorials on how to effectively tackle different enemies and situations. Summer and Winter, two Hell Blasters pilots, are the heroes of the story mode. Each comes from a different side of the conflict, but they are both fighting for the same cause. It's not groundbreaking, and you've probably seen this subject before. The story missions are short, often less than a minute, and they’re connected by cutscenes that look like they were done in MS paint, which is absolutely not a bad thing when the entire package is in that style. The bad news is that the stages have been taken directly from the arcade mode, so that’s another reason why the story mode should take priority. You can replay them if you want to get all three gold stars for no hit run, no bomb run, and score, which is something a normal player like me will never achieve. The goal is to let the enemies fill the screen with as many bullets as then can, then erase them to continue the “chain” and not get hit. A normal run through the level will only get you around one third of the score, so you can see why Hell Blasters might become a great game for players that want to get the best score possible. One last thing worth mentioning is the display. Because the game emulates everything from the old age, you’ll be using only one third of your screen. This means that action takes place in a small rectangle in the middle with two unused gray bars on the sides. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2621863541 The game has a decent amount of extras. There are achievements that are rewarded for doing something really special and endings you unlock by completing the arcade mode on different difficulties with both characters plus whether or not you used continues. The other game modes are practice and score attack for those interested in getting on leaderboards. Pros: - Modern bullet-hell ingredients - Basic gameplay is very entertaining - Great game for score hunters - Several endings Cons: - Art style not for everyone - Limited screen - Story mode should be the only main option

I'm fairly new to playing shoot em ups (shmups) to actually be good at them rather than just credit feed my way through an arcade game. I wanted to get into 'bullet hell' shmups but the games are really intimidating. This game was recommended because the designer is an accomplished bullet hell player who made the gameplay the top priority - and made it so you can use the story mode to actually learn to play a bullet hell. It's been an absolute blast and the story mode really delivers bite sized chunks of training and the arcade so you can practice them and learn how to deal with the enemies. I'm also participating in an online score attack competition for the game that is incredibly fun and I don't normally play for score, only survival. While the graphics are rudimentary, the bosses have a nice charm to them, the 8bit soundtrack is actually quite good, but most importantly the gameplay is REALLY on point and I'm absolutely loving it as someone just learning to play a bullet hell.

Vertical bullet hell with a sci-fi military theme. Tight controls. Arcade and Story mode. Two ship styles and fun scoring system. Cute retro presentation and great audio. Good options and Tate mode. [i]Listed on the [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40858110-Shoot-%2527em-up-Database/]Shoot 'em up Database[/url][/i]

Don't be fooled by the NES-like aesthetics. This is a modern bullet hell shmup with an emphasis on chaining kills (and cancelling bullets), in order to get higher scores (and also there's no screen flickering involved). There's also a good amount of fun game modes including Arcade mode, two characters, a Caravan mode (Score Attack) and even a pretty innovative Story mode. The latter can be seen as huge a tutorial not only for the game, but in some ways the entire shmup genre itself. Here you get to play through small sections of the game, are given instructions and are being taught the basic principles of the game as well advanced scoring mechanics. And the story also has many nods to famous shmup classics. Although I'm not a fan of the entire 8-bit design, the game's look can be quite charming and some tunes are pretty decent. Moreover it features an awesome 9:16 tate mode for fullscreen vertical shmupping. Also the visibility of the bullets is good and it plays very vell. And by the way, you can participate in the currently running running Caravan Competition run by Shmup Junkie by playing the free demo.

Kinda miss this type of classic game... controls feels good and responsive, great visual, and nice bullet pattern. Overall I quite recommend this game.

挺有意思的独立游戏，通关简单 A quite interesting bullet hell shmup. However, 1cc (hard)might be too easy due to the broken scoring and extend system. Would there be a tougher difficulty?

Feels like the greatest master system game ever made. And that soundtrack is just amazing. The Boss Theme in particular is such a banger. If you like bullet hell, or shmups or even if you have never played a shmup before, this is an easy buy. Support your indie shmup devs