Eigengrau

super neat, unique stages! This game is sweet, I don't know why I waited so long to play it.

yeah that's pretty good

The first feature one notices is that the portion of the screen used is perfectly square, a choice explained by the game allowing to shoot in the cardinal directions, and consequently having enemies and attacks coming from all angles. The controls, too, are mapped appropriately: I found myself surprisingly comfortable even with a keyboard scheme that has the right hand controlling movement and the left on shooting, convenient for quick turning. It is far from being the most notable element about the game, as it maintains what it promises in the description: constantly offering new twists and keeping the gameplay fresh, by throwing gimmicks one after another. Some examples, in no particular order: - Larger ships that launch smaller ones like projectiles - A boss is a tank relentlessly aiming and shooting at the player, and can be damaged only by downing the ships coming to support it - Anomaly bubbles that cause any projectiles, own or enemies', to slow down, or alternately bubbles of regular time while all goes slower around them - Another boss is a black hole of sorts that at some points first sends elaborate volleys of bullets, then recalls them in reverse - Some stages may have movement limited, like on fixed nodes, or only at the bottom of the screen while enemies come down in Space Invaders formations - At some point the ship gets a flail attached, which allows to grab enemies and use them to destroy others or walls of bullets; through the same device the player later ends up tethered to a boss - A fake-out boss gets swallowed by the real boss, but then the latter swallows the player too, and that other boss must be confronted! It's a non-stop parade that keeps players on their toes from start to finish. Most bosses use the gimmicks seen in the stages preceding them, culminating in the final boss which can use even more than one at a time. It can be argued that the game ends up feeling quite gimmicky in itself but it's of little importance when it's so fun and keeps itself interesting. I'm not sure if and how much of the visuals are the work of the developer, as most backgrounds (except the simple and very stylish one of the final boss, which also reacts to the phases of the battle) feel quite disjointed from the ships, but it's clean, colorful, and most of all clear. Audio could be better, the effects aren't very punchy and the music is quite generic. I also recognized some boss tracks as some of that generic action music often used in fan productions or, worse, in several shovelware games. I guess it's royalty-free music but even there I'm sure there was much more that could be used. Even if longer than the average shmup from start to finish (at least 90 minutes), the game is split into stages no more than a few minutes long each, and it's in fact great that it manages to not overstay its welcome - far from it. It's also quite accessible, with plenty of options to have lots of extra shield if one feels like it. I'm not sure of the conditions to obtain an extra final surprise after beating the final boss (saw that in a video). I greatly enjoyed playing [b]Eigengrau[/b] and I've been surprised to find out that it doesn't seem to be known much, even in shmup circles. A real hidden gem of the genre.

The Mario Party of shmups

Great game.

I got this game in a charity bundle, and it was my favorite of the group, so I bought it on Steam to give the developer some support. Very creative game, it's always throwing new twists.