ZAKESTA-Z

A retro Aleste-influenced shmup and a vocaloid soundtrack might seem incongruous, but the pairing produces so many soaring moments throughout this one as the bass drops, the enemies come swarming, and you hit your Z-Zone for millions of points. A lot of care went into the presentation here; not only is it quite beautiful to experience, but there’s also a sense of mystery behind the whole thing that’s hard to describe. What is happening at the end of stage 5? Who is this final boss? Perhaps Zakichi is telling an elaborate visual story here; maybe he just thought it looked cool. It’s not the most challenging shmup to 1cc, even at the highest difficulty, but it’s such a rich experience that you’ll probably find yourself craving another run—and the very fun scoring system is the perfect excuse. More than worth its low price tag, and a steal on sale.

I certainly won't be the one to knock this off 100% positive. Fantastic game. Fast, smooth, weapons feel pretty good. The screen is completely covered in bright colors and flashing nonsense and yet it's very readable and fun, instead of frustrating. Really need to play this one more.

A vertical shmup with intentionally low fi graphics and a kickass techno/trance/rave soundtrack. It is a lot of fun to play and will not kill you instantly.

love this game. music is great. Kaikan is good too. Zakichi is under rated. By the way Zakichi if you are reading this, thank you. you made free games for a long time. i had to buy them to support. keep up the good work.

ZAKESTA-Z is yet another great shmup from zakichi. I wish I knew about them sooner but oh well. The retro look is quite nice though I'd recommend experimenting with the options menu in case parts of the visuals are too overwhelming. You can even change certain songs there in case you aren't a huge fan of vocaloid tracks. The scoring system has a simple risk vs reward thing going on. Score items aren't usually worth much (and in fact decrease in value overtime) unless you use the Z-Zone which really boosts their worth. But you can't use it all the time and score items have a habit of clumping up near the top of the screen. So do you throw caution to the wind, going up for big points at the risk of taking a hit? Or do you play things safer by staying closer to the middle so you have more time to react, but maybe not getting as many points? The longer you hold down the Z-Zone button, the more of a cool down it has and needs more point items you have to collect to use it again. So that's another important decision to make. It isn't anything complicated really, but when you're trying to dodge enemies and bullets it makes playing for score its own dance to master. You have only one main weapon, but several sub weapons which have nice variety. They cycle by default but you can adjust the settings in case there's one you really like. Instead of dying when you get hit, you lose a level of your subweapon. As long as its above 0, you won't lose a life so its more beginner friendly. But this isn't an easy game; especially the last few levels and if you get hit too often, you'll really feel the lack of fire power. An easy recommend for any shmup fan out there.

Trilha sonora absurda, gameplay insana 11/10

A well-made short retro shmup with 3 difficulties. Fast paced, dodging and aiming both are necessary. soundtrack is the excellent free soundtrack work of d-elf of course.