Black Beacon Hill

soul + kino = soulkino I need more.

One of my favorite bullet hell games. Too bad it's unfinished but what's there is awesome. I'd recommend playing at least on Hard so you actually have to learn how everything works. No Hit is a whole different beast that requires thinking ahead and may feel luck-based for some stages (difficulty can fluctuate from one attempt to the next, though I don't think it ever becomes impossible), but I still thoroughly enjoyed playing this 2-hour-long game for over 20 hours.

That was really intense and flashy. I really enjoyed my experience. Unfortunately I was not the best at it. I played on normal difficulty, but on the last main stage I took it down to story difficulty because it was too much for me to comprehend. Maybe the game should have communicated some things a little better, but I don't mind not getting it. The story had me relatively invested, even as I had a dread for what would face the small cast of characters next. The side story I enjoyed, but I found it easy to mix up who was on what side especially as it went on. Again, could be me. Anyway, I recommend the game, and it had me really pumped on many occasions; even repeating stages I was still giddy... well, I guess until I got too bad at reading the source of my mistakes. And can you believe it there's a no-hit difficulty?? What? Normal has 25 HP!! The directions only mouse controls are interesting. The soundtrack is brilliant, would buy as highest priority on Bandcamp/Steam if it became available.

Games by their nature make you feel like you're in control over what happens. You move the pieces, you make the dialogue choice, you equip your character. But your real agency is always much more limited that it seems, and even when limits seem to be removed, what's changed is mainly that you can make many meaningless decisions, like a decision to go to a completely empty place in an open world game. This game makes you feel instead like you have very limited control of what's going on. You can choose where your character shoots but not whether your character shoots, where your character dodges but not when to dodge, and so on. Which is realistic: it's circumstances and enemy action and your character's abilities that force you to shoot or dodge. The story is also about people like this, with very little control over what's going on, and in situations like this, with the enemy also getting a vote in what happens. In the first couple of missions it might feel like you're not really doing anything at all, but the Lorenzo job is likely to make you want to lower the difficulty. The writing is poignant without being forced, funny while taking the situation seriously, and I cared f…

wow this game pulled me in immmmmmmmmmeeeeediately i cant wait to play more

Incredibly cool aesthetic.