Flesh

Flesh is a horizontal shmup that is hand drawn frame by frame, I really dig the visuals and the music of the game. The mechanics of the game involve charging up your meter by either shooting or collecting coins and use the meter to slash away bullets. From what I played the story involves a man going through a metamorphosis to become beautiful. My main issues with the game are how there are no ways to obtain extends in this shmup. This is just a personal pet peeve of mine as clearing this game is definitely possible but I could see how discouraging it could be towards newer players. That being said, the game will continue even if you died and lost all your lives and does not get in the way of finishing the true story. I'd appreciate it if the game gave you the option to continue or not but I have a feeling due to TYPE C having one life and TYPE A only having 3 lives it could create some bothersome experiences within a new player. The backgrounds of some stages can feel somewhat repetitive and somewhat lack in variety. The game will finish a stage and give you the option to either go to the next stage or view the leaderboards. This is great for practice as you can pick any stage …

This is brilliant fun. As well as your main shot, you have a sword which you can use for extra damage and clearing bullets. It feels really satisfying to use. You recharge it by hitting enemies with your shot and collecting coins. You do triple damage up close so the game really encourages you to play aggressively. You also get extra score for killing enemies before they've been on screen for too long. There's a type c ship that dies after one hit for when you get really good at the game, you get an extra sword charge slot with this ship to make up for it's squishiness. It's a blast. Highly recommended!

I like the grotesque, hand-drawn body horror art style here. My only real gripe is that there is no focus shot, which does make it harder to dodge in between narrow gaps whenever I've run out of bullet-cancelling charges. Worth it on sale.

SHMUPs aren't usually my thing, but I'm having a lot of fun with this! The controls are really easy to pick up, and I love the humour and unique hand-drawn art style. More than worth the asking price, in my opinion :) There are a couple of quality of life tweaks I'd love to see in the future: * A 'restart level' button on the game over screen, so you don't have to go back through the main menu * A more visible 'lives left' counter (there is one at the bottom of the screen, but it's hard to see)

Fortunately this game has a demo so you can try it for yourself to see how ace it is. A quirky shmup that is just great fun to play.Probably my favourite NEW shmup this year so far. Excellent stuff.