RagingBlasters

As someone who sucks at shmups and finds the genre a bit intimidating, this was an awesome, beginner-friendly game! Mechanics are simple and intuitive with no bombs and just two attack buttons. Most of the gameplay revolves around using the wide or standard shot based on the current enemy patterns. Powerups are abundant and do not level, so you can switch almost at-will and aren't super penalized for deaths. The game is also pretty generous with 1ups, so I was able to 1cc normal and hard on my first attempts. The chain system is pretty addictive and gives you a lot of incentive to memorize enemy spawns and optimize runs. The visuals, music, and gameplay mechanics are a nice throwback to PC Engine/other early 90s shmups. TL;DR play this ♥♥♥♥, it's solid and a great entry point to the shmup genre

If you are new to games by TERARIN GAMES, then Raging Blasters is a good place to start. As others have already stated, this is also a good shmup to start out with if you are new to the genre in general. The lower difficulties do good job accommodating newcomers while expert difficulty can catch even the more experienced players off guard- in other words, this game does a good job accommodating players of all skill levels. Buy this on sale.

Fun little shooter, short playtime. Finished on my first attempt so normal mode is pretty chill. Reminds me of some of the shooters on the TG16 like Blazing Lazers with it's fast moving backgrounds. Has a caravan mode too for the score hunters. Possibly a bit too simplistic with the weapons that don't upgrade, and the short playtime. Definitely worth a sale price, but I wouldn't spend $15+ on it.

Cool! Good! Great!

Not the prettiest of games, and most bosses are somewhat boring, but otherwise still enjoyable and worth a playthrough. Playing on expert mode really opens up the gameplay, as even the simplest of waves all fire bullets at you, leading to much tenser moments of weaving through those bullets to grab the crystals. There is also a fun 3min caravan mode to increase replayability. Its also pretty neat what this game does with the screen. As its a vertical game that pretends to use the entire horizontal screen space. As in the backgrounds continue horizontally beyond where your ship is allowed to move. Some enemies also move through this space when entering or leaving the screen, but will not fire from this 'off limits' area.

One of the fastest games on Steam.