Kanamono

Looking at the screenshots or videos, I came here expecting some funny B-tier 16 bits era STG with a charming PC-Engine look, but with zero ambition or novelty, and I was fine with this. What a mistake, Kanamono resulted to have one of the most complex and best thought scoring mechanics in a modern STG, with a puzzling design in its enemy waves, whose complexity is almost on par with Ikaruga. When the enemies die they will let pieces of scrap on the screen. You have a button to absorb this, to create an attack whose intensity will vary depending on the number of pieces. If you get enough pieces, when you throw the attack, it will create an explosion destroying multiple enemies at the same time, in addition to the surrounding bullets. Or you can try to create a shield, that will protect you from an impact. And that at the same time it will let you to continue destroying ships while it's activated, trying to collect a higher number of pieces of scrap. Collecting pieces of scrap is also the key to obtain extra lives. So here it comes the complexity of the system and the puzzling design: the pieces of scrap can also be destroyed with your main shot. So to get a high score in this game will depend on knowing when to stop firing after an enemy has been destroyed, to collect the scrap. With various enemies on screen, you will need to know the exact sequence: first, destroy the small ones, collect the scrap, and then use the super shot to get a big combo destroying the bigger ships. Some ships have multiple destructible parts. So you should try to start destroying the secondary parts. Get scrap once they are destroyed, and then using the super shot for the main core of the enemy. Or sometimes, you need to stop destroying enemies, simply dodging their bullets, waiting until the formation is aligned in the same area of the screen. To destroy all of them at the same time with the explosion created by your super shot. In the first minutes of play, this is super confusing, because it radically changes the way in which you tend to play a STG. But once you start learning the mechanics, using them for a scoring advantage, memorizing the waves, it's super fun. And you can see how well designed this game is, and how every ship, wave and pattern has been masterfully placed to give the player various creative and intricate ways of building a higher combo or score. It has two difficulty modes, Normal is super easy and a perfect place for beginners. If you don't care about scoring or exploiting its mechanics, this can be easily completed. But including as the default difficulty a mode in which the survival is easy, it has been a smart decision. Because even for skilled players, this mode is ideal to try to learn the multiple scoring secrets and strategies for destroying the waves with a high combo. And to get a perfect performance in each level is still super challenging. While the Hard mode has the finesse and difficulty from your typical arcade game, with a ton more of bullets and full of adrenaline pumping moments. Something that you can put in an arcade cabinet, and the more skilled STG crew will love trying to get a 1CC. Lastly, be aware that you need to deactivate the Vsync in the options menu, or the game will run at something like 4x the normal speed. So if you start playing, losing a credit in 10 seconds, no, this game is not as super fast.