SPINGUN

Reaction to SPINGUN controls after first five minutes of play: WTF?! What genius came up with this? Reaction to SPINGUN controls after first hour of play: Amazing! What genius came up with this? Fun, frustrating arcade-style shooter that grows on you the more you play it. Lots of replay in the different game modes and also in achievement hunting.

Game Jam winner sort of thing. Very minimalistic controls make the game stand out. As the description says, there are only two buttons involved in it, but it struggles to introduce the third one for the exit. It has rather good game feel being responsive, weapons are useful and varied, but some skill is required so you have to get used to controls. My biggest gripe about it is not being minimalistic enough. The ball sandbox game, tutorial and story mode look like something left better for debug mode than a game. They do not add much to it other than try to teach mechanics, which are better taught during the endless mode. Story mode gets boring quick, because you have the same weapon to use for each level. Bosses are hard because they take half the screen and navigating around it is already challenging. Worst of all was the curse mode, where random effects mess with you even more. I ended up flying around avoiding the curse and ignoring the enemies. Being kicked by one enemy often results in multiple hp loss because the ship is pinballed too fast around the screen. Content is locked behind "get the first rank on leaderboard", which I cannot approve of. It is not a game about customizing ships and lasers, that's irrelevant and bloats it. Still, there are enough hidden mechanics that serve the game right. You are encouraged to kill enemies quickly but that spawns more enemies faster. Overall the core of the game is good and if you have several hours and fingers to spare, go spin some gun.