Polyfury

Polyfury is a very damn fun and very damn stylish game. Dev certainly knows a thing or two or ten about juice, and even more about shmups.

polyfury in my mind is this pretty awesome cross between a game like furi and the touhou games. just boss battle after boss battle where you need to dodge increasingly difficult bullet patterns while sneaking in your own attacks. it's pretty clear to me playing this that mr wayfarer (who is a good friend of mine) has a real appreciation and love for the inspirations he draws from, as there's a clear understanding of what makes these games good without falling into their trappings. and let me tell you something that i think really makes the game for me: mr wayfarer _really_ cares about making this game both good *and* as accessible as possible to as many people as possible--both through in game options and by going to great lengths that it performs as well as possible on every platform it's available for. he just really cares about making the best game possible, and it really shows!

Fairly straightforward combination of Tempest and bullet hell games. It's quite clever, and does a lot with the premise. I'm a few stages in and there's already a lot of potential for score grinding and pattern memorization, and it feels very produced in a way that a lot of indie danmaku don't. My main criticism is the controls are a little finicky. In most bullet hell games, you can hold a button (usually fire) to slow your character movement, to make weaving the patterns easier. There's none of that here, it's just raw analog stick input, which means you have to be ~extremely~ precise in your thumb movements to properly graze (which gives you bomb and score). Perhaps it's because I'm getting older, but the tension in my thumb started to hurt my hand after a little bit. Still, great game, well worth it, especially for people like me looking for a unique take on some well-trod arcade design.

Polyfury is one of these amazing little games that you'd expect to be at least a bit more known, and yet they're just a hidden gem. The mechanics are simple and fun, the game has infinite hours of gameplay if you love trying to get a highscore, and there are so many accessibility features that make sure that everyone can enjoy the game.

some great controls! I had a lot of fun with this one.

Great boss rush game. Simple to play, but hard to get those top scores.