Vacant Kingdom

Dev is very active in discord and very helpful, tries their best to make the game good and it pays off. Just replayed it again for the first time in a while and it still holds up as a great game. Thanks shru

Transparency Notice: I received the game from the developer as a result of participating in beta testing. This game is a fun combo of a bullet hell boss battle game, but with a fun puzzle-filled adventure in between, and lovely characters you meet along the way with funny dialogue. This is an awesome combo because typically bullet hells are just battles, and adventure game might not have the most in depth combat, but this game does both well and both gameplays compliment each other adding a feeling of variety. I'm not great at bullet hells, but I found the medium difficulty really fun. I had to put sa good amount of tries in the boss battles, but eventually I could get through them. The final boss was particularly tough, but it felt good when I beat it. As a bullet hell, the game is also a unique experience. The bosses are really varied and you will have to move all over the area in most battles. You also get a slow down mechanic to help you gt through tough patterns. Finally, the ability to change your main shot and special shot makes for some fun ways to replay bosses and can even lead to decision making as certain combos might actually be more useful on certain bosses. Then the adventure part is pure classic stuff you might expect from JRPGs or Zelda style games. You've got outdoor and indoor areas as well as puzzle sections in between with cool people you meet along the way. The game even has a side objective of inviting NPCs to the the starting area, encouraging interactions with the characters and adding a fun side challenge. Exploration and optional puzzles can lead you to finding new bullets and specials that feed into the combat part of the game. There's even some secret bosses to find. If I had to make criticisms, I was hoping there would have been more major areas in the game, but I am happy that the ones that are in the game are well made and even allow solving problems in varied ways. The game also doesn't have the most interesting plot as a whole, but the journey itself and the characters you meet along the way are great. Basically, don't expect a super epic or complex plot. In summary, a great combo of bullet hell and adventure. If you already love both of these, this is the game for you. Might even be a good way to get into bullet hells if your someone who hasn't played them but are used to games with a JRPG like progression.

an awesome bullet hell rpg combo. this game is just great, the soundtrack rocks, the bosses are good, the gameplay is fun, the puzzles are good (but for my monkey brain too hard), my only problem is, that at least for me, its to short, i mean its not a short game i played 8 hours. but i want more. i would love a sequel. i heavily recommend.

ludo

An excellent twin-stick shooter which doesn't simply incorporate bullet-hell "aesthetics", but which actually provides true bullet-hell gameplay, with one notable departure from the usual tropes found in the genre : the lack of a screen-clearing ability. Instead you are given a slowmo ability reminiscent of the FEAR franchise, and this intriguing design decision makes for very unique gameplay. Unfortunately there aren't that many enemy types or bosses, but what is there is extremely solid and leaves us wanting for more (plus the bosses put up a heck of a fight on Masochist difficulty, so you won't simply breeze through everything either). In other words, if you are interested in the danmaku aspect of this game, give it a shot! On top of the aforementioned shooting, you will spend your time exploring a small interconnected world and solving traversal puzzles, some of which I found pretty non-trivial (looking at you, bath-house). There is good variety here and they feel like a nice break from the action. Furthermore, you will meet and talk with many wacky characters, whose dialogue often got a chuckle out of me. And I haven't even mentioned the head-bopping and extremely diverse soundtrack! Personally the only part that irritated me was the platforming which, given the isometric viewpoint and the apparent lack of "coyote time" (where you can still jump for a brief moment after leaving a ledge), felt a little unfair and unforgiving. This was particularly noticeable during two of the boss fights, though not game-breaking by any means. Honestly overall this game is fire, though I do find it to be a little short. If the developer reads this (and other reviews stating the same thing), PLEASE MAKE MORE OF THIS!!!

Fun lil bullet hell ARPG with decent writing that unfortunately peaks in the demo. If you play the demo and think "i wanna do that again" then by all means, but I sorta mean that literally because the content added by the full game is about the same length as the demo, a bit longer if a certain secret level gives you a lot of trouble. The fight against the Oracle is one of my favorite bosses in all of gaming but is, as I lead this review, in the demo. The customization of assist mode is really good though and stuff like that should honestly be standard tbh, the game already has 3 difficulty modes but assist mode can make the difficulty range anywhere from "slightly harder than a standard visual novel" to "if gamer heracles was a thing playing this game on max anti-assist would be one of the labors." Maybe you can be gamer Heracles, who knows.

Really cool game, blending together different genres pretty well! Make sure you grab the OST with the game. Bangers.

Extremely charming. Great soundtrack, and colorful characters and story. Also, the fights are reasonable in learning their patterns, and the puzzles are chill.