SHINORUBI

Shinorubi's visual design is very striking in short bursts. It's a game that I very much wanted to fall in love with. The medals and powerups pop on the screen, the intro and between-stage screens are well-designed, as is the character art for the different pilots and bosses. However, the more I played, the more disappointed I became. The art style is vibrant, but there's very little detail differentiating each stage. Each one looks and feels very similar. Most boss fights are you fruitlessly chasing the tail end of a samey-looking spaceship as bullets appear from off screen. There's a distinct lack of character to the bosses when you're fighting them, and because the bullet patterns are just kinda thrown out there, I'm really hard pressed to differentiate one boss from another. I really wish some of the character art from the pilot select screen and the end-of-stage screen showing the boss you just killed showed up more often in the levels. It might go a long way towards adding some personality. I can see some clear inspirations from other shmups on the surface of Shinorubi, but the finer details really seem to be missed. You have a regular spread shot and a more damaging laser …

Unfortunately, that's a no from me. The reason is twofold: a lack of clarity and a poor sense of feedback. The visuals are too bright, cluttered, and just straight up weird. Explosions are just a puff of bright whiteness, and it's overall hard to tell what's going on on the screen. A CAVE shmup this is not. The sense of feedback is also poor, with explosions lacking both visually and in terms of audio. There might be a decent shmup buried in here somewhere, but the surface is too disappointing for me to go digging any further.

The games does not see Fight Sticks inputs (tried three different ones and some game pads as well). Playing bullet hell game on keyboard is retarded.

This game is a lot of fun. Must own if 'shootemup' fan. Boss music is awesome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKp6Hl8gqQY&t=1049s

Super fun and accessible shmup with awesome art. A couple of the late bosses have some patterns that need work, they are too fast with no real way to evade. Other than that I wish the game was zoomed out just a tad. Would recommend but unless your really like shmups the price may be a bit steep.

Quick first impression. The good : - Great visuals - Fantastic soundtrack - Nervous gameplay inspired by the best danmakus out there - Very good level of overall quality. You really sense the love and passion that has been put in this game. The bad : - That's the only thing that bothered me while playing. But it's potentially a big problem, especially when you increase the difficulty : the game really begs for a Tate mode. I love vertical shooters, but in landscape format it is kind of awkward. It always feels like you miss a part of the screen and you see the enemies at the last moment. The pattern of bullets don't have enough time to deploy and will often corner you instead of letting you a way to live. It is frustrating that you have a lot of horizontal freedom, when in vertical scroll, what you really want is vertical freedom and don't want to wander too far on the sides. I saw the game will have a "Pink Label" release for Exa Arcadia in Tate mode. I really hope to see it on steam one day. - The game is beautiful, but doesn't really stand out in term of design (all enemies looks the same, no new mechanics, the backgrounds are not memorable) - Menus could be simpler (all those…