Picayune Dreams

Seems like a run of the mill bullet hell VS like game. I wish there was a neutral recommendation. The visual style is not my favorite, get it on sale if you want another VS like game in your library.

Picayune Dreams is a very good bullet heaven with a surprisingly strange amount of actual game inside of it. The gameplay is obviously built around the Vampire Survivors formula, but it leans much harder into bullet hell. You're constantly moving, weaving between enemies and projectiles while trying to keep your build together, and the game does a good job of making the screen progressively more unreasonable without turning it into complete visual soup. The upgrades are probably my favourite part. There are a lot of different ways to build, and watching everything start to scale into increasingly stupid numbers is very satisfying. The bosses also break up the normal runs nicely and actually require you to pay attention to where you're standing. The presentation is where Picayune Dreams gets interesting. The psychedelic visuals, glitch effects, strange enemies and music all work together really well, and the story is presented in these little surreal sections that gradually start making less sense in a way that I think is intentional. I also like that the game doesn't force the story onto you. You can mostly play it as a very good horde survival game, but there's considerably more going on if you start looking around. The biggest issue is that the sheer amount of stuff happening on screen can make some runs difficult to read, especially once your build starts becoming unreasonable. There is also a point where progression starts feeling more familiar than surprising. Still, there's a lot of care here. It could have just been another Survivors-like with a different coat of paint, but the bullet hell mechanics, bosses, music and strange little story sections give it its own identity. Very good game. Very busy screen.