ULTRA CORE DIVE

Hard but fair arcade twin stick with a great soundtrack and gorgeous pixel art! Fast-paced levels and formidable bosses make for a very rewarding and surprisingly re-playable experience. Some very cool bullet patterns in the later levels!

Twin-stick shooter suited for beginners or those searching for one to play leisurely. Getting hit does not immediately cost you a life. Instead, your ship goes into a crisis state (though none of your capabilities are affected). If you get hit again in this state, then do you lose one ship. You can recover from this state either by saving/collecting a human or by proceding into the next room. There are no difficulty options. If you play carefully enough, you'll only really lose ships during some of the later bosses, as you can not recover from crisis state during those. You also have a dash that allows you to dash through bullets/hazards without taking damage. There's a sufficient enemy variety. However, I did have issues with the pacing. Each layer has 10 rooms. Since the first stage in STGs is usually the shortest, I find it noticeable how long it takes to reach the first boss in relation to a full run, when compared to other STGs. Since the first layer is also quite easy, I always found the start of a full run to be quite boring. Furthermore, I don't know if this is merely perception or fact, but I also felt like the later layers take less time than the first two or three. Well, the fifth layer is definitely the shortest. Some of its rooms are beaten very, very quickly. Ultimately, the final boss was always the part I looked forward to. Plus, there's an additional phase if you find all hidden humans. There's a Level Up system. If you collect a certain amount of stars, you'll be given the option to chose between two upgrades. These upgrade options have some randomness. However, there isn't that much variety regarding the upgrades themselves, and it also feels as though the order in which certain options appear is very streamlined, meaning that the actual RNG element for your playthrough is really small. The stages themselves are also handcrafted and appear in the same order. The only instance of RNG that can be frustrating is obtaining your desired special attack. In order to be able to get any advanced special attacks, you'll first need to unlock them for the duration of your current run via a Level Up upgrade. However, unlocking it doesn't mean you immediately obtain it. It just means that that specific special attack can now drop as an item for you to obtain. Luckily, there are so many of these drops scattered throughout the playthrough that that isn't much of a nuisance either. In regards to the scoring system, I first thought it was pretty neat, as it had a combo system ranging from 1 to 30. Save a human or dodge through bullets to increase your chain by 1, destroy an enemy to maintain it, get hit or let the timer run out to have it reset to 1. The chain multiplies your score directly. Unfortunately, it is also possible to just infinitely milk score and there are many opportunities for this. As I'm probably not updating this review, here's my [url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/3664120/discussions/0/592902882169297391/] discussion thread [/url] about this, in case a change is going to be made. Due to this very easy-to-execute milk, the incentive to do actual skill-based scoring is ultimately negated, which is very unfortunate.

Easy to pick up but gets hard pretty quickly! Banger soundtrack

A fun and hectic bullethell with great art and soundtrack, and lots of special weapons. Time to find all the secrets!

in this game you'll find yourself navigating yourself in tiny rooms filled with enemies. keeping track of where you'll be safe while still being able to attack the enemies gets tough pretty fast! love the fact that you can customize the color pallette. i keep changing the colors like every other level lol

Ultra Core Dive is a hell of a lot of fun. The passing is wonderful, the controls are tight, the power ups feel like they give you real options, plus the soundtrack is just amazing. Every run gets you a few power ups that do just enough good to make you want to play one more fun. This is a little hidden gem for all the arcade shooter fans out there. I have this game on another platform, and liked it enough to also get a Steam copy, so I have much more playtime than Steam has recorded. It's a shame this game did not get any more attention as it totally deserves far more than 10 reviews. Highly recommended!!!

Hooking bullet hell game with amazing music <3 Also super fun to play with keyboard and mouse. Worth to buy!

Well executed scifi-horror aesthetic with attention to detail. Mechanics felt fair and the game was still offering a good challenge with clever level designs and cool boss encounters! Also great soundtrack! Controller was recommended to play but I played with mouse and keyboard.

I really fun bullethell game Loved the boss fights and the soundtrack

Great arcade twin stick shooter / bullet hell. Level design is awesome and it's possible to use wide variety of gamestyles to beat this game. Game also has replay value and soundtracks are very good!