Horizon Shift

Meh it's a mash up of two different classic arcade styles that unfortunately didn't really tickle my pickle. It feels tedious and quite overwhelming making the experience kind of stressful. Between that and the uninspired retro art style I really didn't enjoy this one like I thought I would. :-(

[b]My playtime:[/b] 96.8h (based on steam, 100% achievements) [b]Grindy Achievement(s):[/b] No. [b]Optional Achievement(s):[/b] Yes (9 achievements). [b]Difficult Achievement(s):[/b] Yes (5 achievements; the game is difficult). [h1]Intro[/h1] [i]Horizon Shift[/i] is a combination of bullet hell and platformer with a brick breaker minigame. The game has 34 main levels in total. [b]Pros:[/b] - 7 modes - You can customize the game speed - Unique boss fights - Powerups [b]Cons:[/b] - Performance issues - Some levels rely on luck to complete - You can fall from the platform you're standing on all of a sudden - A lot of issues in [i]Shift-out[/i] mode - Shield powerup has a larger hitbox than the ship and it has no invisibility frame whenever it's down - Jumping airtime is too short compared to the bullet speed [h1]Should you buy this game?[/h1] [b]No.[/b] [i]The game has a great concept, but the execution isn't as good as it sounds. Some bugs and performance issues also make it harder to finish the game. Do yourself a favor and buy an actual platformer or bullet hell game.[/i] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ [h1]In-Depth Review[/h1] [h1]Graphics[/h1] The game has a simplistic graphic with enemies and bullets in neon lights and a monochromatic ship. You also can apply some filters to change how the game looks. I found them to useless though since it's harder to play the game with the filters on. [h1]The game[/h1] [b]Modes[/b] The game has 7 modes in total. Four of them are unlocked at the start and the rest of them will be unlocked after you finish one of the main modes. The main mode consists of 34 main levels with 25 normal levels where you have to survive for a certain amount of time, 5 boss fights, and 4 brick breaker minigames. Five modes consists of these levels with the difference in the number of lives, checkpoints, ship upgrades, and game speed. The other two modes, [i]Shift-out[/i] and [i]Boss Challenge[/i], consist of the bonus levels and boss fights in the main mode. You have to finish all brick breaker minigames in the main mode and an extra level, totaling to 5 levels, with 15 lives in [i]Shift-out[/i] mode. [i]Boss Challenge[/i] requires you to beat all bosses without dying with a fully upgraded ship. [b]Mechanics[/b] As I said before, this game is a mix of bullet hell and platformer. You stand on a platform called horizon and you have to survive for a certain amount of time to complete the level. Enemies will come from above and below and you can shift between both directions to shoot and kill them. There are 4 different types of enemies, which are differentiated based on their color. Blue enemies will break a portion of your horizon, red enemies will latch on your horizon and move around to limit your movement, and green enemies won't do anything to your horizon although they will annoy you with their bullets. There are also enemies that can't be killed which shoot lasers and enemies called [i]Swarms[/i] that will break your horizon whenever they touch it. You will gain a multiplier whenever a blue or red enemy touch your horizon. The multiplier will increase your [i]Chain[/i] score, which serves as a potential score that you can add to your actual score. You can add this [i]Chain[/i] to your actual score by using a bomb, which will be unlocked by killing enemies. Keeping a high [i]Chain[/i] by racking a high multiplier and utilizing the bomb as little as possible is the key to gain a higher score, especially since there is a powerup to double your [i]Chain[/i] which will appear from time to time. However, I find this scoring concept to be useless since the main point of this game is survival and there is no reward for having a high score except for two achievements. [b]Levels[/b] The game is very easy in the beginning, especially in the first five levels, and will become progressively harder as you progress. Enemies in later levels are abundant, making it impossible to kill everything. The game forces you to survive with these limitations by either spamming your bombs whenever it's available or dodging the enemies by luck. You will run into cases where it's impossible to dodge, especially since the game seems to encourage you to kill the enemies in a certain order to complete the level. Lasers don't automatically disappear and you must wait for them to disappear completely before passing them. It takes very long to wait for it to happen and the short airtime that you have when you jump also doesn't help when you want to avoid the slow-moving bullets. Jumping becomes hardly an option to dodge, especially if you want to avoid lasers or attacks where a lot of bullets are involved. [b]Powerups[/b] Some powerups will be dropped randomly after your [i]Chain[/i] reach a certain amount. I found them to be useful although the shield powerup behaves strangely; it has a bigger hitbox than my ship and there is no invisibility frame after it's down, meaning that you'll still die if you get hit by a laser. [b]Boss Fight[/b] The game has 5 boss fights in total. All bosses have unique pattern although there is one boss [spoiler](third boss)[/spoiler] that always gave me a massive FPS drop since it has an attack that shoots out a lot of particles on the screen. Even without all that, it's still hard to dodge the bullets. Since this game uses platformer controls, you can only dodge bullets by going left and right. Jumping airtime is very short, making it difficult to dodge some attacks that can be dodged by just moving up or down in other bullet hell games. This game makes it worse by giving a boss that shoots out lasers randomly as soon as it uses a full-screen attack. [b]Minigame[/b] The brick breaker minigame will just end if you die in the main modes, but you must break all of the bricks in [i]Shift-out[/i] mode to finish it. The problem is, this minigame has a lot of problems. Some levels have their screen split, making it hard to reach the ball. The increasing speed after the ball hits anything also doesn't help. It's hard to move the ball to the direction I wanted to and I kept on failing to hit the ball whenever I tried to hit the ball while moving to move the ball farther because of the paddle size. Even after all that, there are also cases where the ball will sometimes go out of the screen or stuck in a certain position, never falling to the ground. The game will also reduce your life even though an extra ball that you get from the level falls to the ground. [b]Length[/b] I finished [i]Arcade Arrange[/i] (one of the main modes) in 11h, [i]Boss Challenge[/i] in 22h, and [i]Shift-out[/i] mode in 6.6h. I obtained the [i]Tournament Mode[/i] achievement in 1h and [i]Horizon Legend[/i] achievement in 95.2h. Some of them are taking a long time because I played in a laptop that only meet the minimum spec. You need to use a device that meet the recommended spec to 100% this game easily. Some problems still persists though, like the delay between restarts. [b]Problems[/b] The game uses 1GB memory on the splash screen. The game will also stutter to the point it's unplayable when you restart the game a lot of times and it will slow down whenever a lot of particles are on the screen. The ship will also randomly falls from the platform out of nowhere, especially after level 22+. [h1]Conclusion[/h1] A platformer mixed with a bullet hell game with a lot of problems and performance issues. The game also has a brick breaker minigame as a bonus game that behaves strangely. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/23741321]Follow our curator page[b] Alexander's Club Curations[/b], if you like and want to see more reviews like this one.[/url][/quote]

This game satisfies the nostalgic old shooter games, like Galaga, with an added horizontality of a center base line that you can flip on to shoot enemies above and below the line. Defend yourself from enemies that will shoot and destroy you, or parts of the platform you're on and if you let the latter happen - well the game gets harder! There's several different game modes, and options (waves, speed, effects, etc.) for each game mode makes it very flexible to your preference of gameplay. My experience comes from Arcade arrange and later on the Tournament mode. I kept the graphics to a minimum, so it's better to prioritize my targets, but you can adjust the effects as much or as little as you like! Controls all worked fine, and the gameplay was smooth with no lag, bugs nor glitches. The level scaling is stable, so you can gradually get harder and more difficult enemies. The 2nd and 3rd boss fights were definitely a sweaty game for me. The effects also applies to the sound and music that you can choose, as part of the options. As for graphics, you can choose the classic black BG, or invert the BG to white instead ... [Spoiler]to blind your eyes, why would you do that? [/spoiler] Overall, it's a very nice nostalgic game that plays out very nicely, despite being an older arcade game. I give Horizon Shift a thumbs up!

kendi haline bir shoot em up oyunu fena değil türe göre iyi diyebilirim

НЕДОСТАТОК СНА ПОДРЫВАЕТ СИЛЫ И УТОМЛЯЕТ МОЙ РАЗУМ.

Meh didn't do it for me. I do feel the passion that this dev has for game development which was nice to see!

Es una verga

💋

The game is an exercise in frustration. The movement is irritating to put it nicely as you'll attempt to move small bits to dodge projectiles and end up sliding in whichever direction at mach speeds. I've fallen through the horizon platform at least 10 times when it transitions from a boss to a bonus stage. Hit boxes aren't right either. If you're going to buy a game for $5 dollars just buy anything else or be unlucky enough to get this in a humble bundle like me! Also how does something so basic have OPTIMIZATION ISSUES?! MHW with all settings maxed out runs better than this game.

Бесполезная инди поделка.