Jet Buster

Quality Music!! not the best shmup but half decent 7/10

I just picked up a bunch of shmups in the summer sale, and dabbled in ~30 minutes of each just to test them out. So far this is my favorite. The music and pixel art make a great first impression, and the gameplay is very responsive. Movement speed feels perfect, and there's a really fun medalling system that also provides metaprogression currency to unlock new playable characters. It's obvious that Jet Buster was made with a lot of care and attention to detail. I was honestly hesitant at first due to the heavy focus on anthro characters, but they're mostly just on the game's optional borders and on the character select screen, so don't let them push you away from trying a genuinely great game if you're on the fence. I almost skipped on it, and I'm glad I gave it a try.

This game is a very unfun SHMUP to play. I have 1CCs on many games in the genre but in this one I could barely compel myself to play long enough just to clear the first level. Whatever is going on here does not work for me, whether that's hitbox jank or bad enemy placement or boss design or whatever. Only having one character to play with from the start also doesn't help, and despite the sort of fun combination of aesthetic and sound design this feels overall like a wholly unpolished experience and not one worth spending any real time on.

Top tier arcade style shmup! feels like a modern classic. I just wish there was a boss select but besides that u gotta check this game out if u like shoot em ups.

This game has some cute character art (especially the new pictures by "Alex"--they should add an extra pic to the bonus store drawn by that artist), and some amusing character banter (as text--a bit hard to read before it disappears though). There is a twist to the game design where the typical bonus coins you collect raise a multiplier value; then if you shoot at more coins with a special gun, they'll turn into "medals" which you collect as currency. You have to do this at the same time as fighting/dodging enemies. You can spend medals to get additional continues, and to purchase new characters and bonuses. One of the bonuses is "infinite continues", which strangely ends up defeating half the purpose of the medals. The game plays like a typical "bullet hell", but its main problem is that the enemy bullets are gigantic, and fill the screen in ways that are nearly impossible to dodge. Also, they move at a speed that exceeds normal human reaction speed. And even if you set a different color for the tiny square that is your hitbox, it's so hard to see while moving that avoiding enemy shots becomes a lot of guesswork, dumb luck, and infinite continues. This pretty much defeats …

This game is awesome. Super fun bullet patterns to dodge, really smooth and responsive controls. Funny story. It's got it all. If you can get past the anamorphic animals there's a lot to love here. Finally got a 1cc of normal mode after a lot of tries. And I already want to go back in and try it with other characters and eventually expert mode. Top tier shmup.