Hell Maiden

Firstly, it needs to be acknowledged that this game is in early access. There's going to be bugs and rough edges here and there. Fortunately, I've not run into anything too dire yet, though I did have one moment where I had to close the game. However, from what I understand of the devs, this is also probably their biggest project thus far in terms of complexity and scope. Pocket Mirror was a game originally made using RPGMaker, and Little Goody Two Shoes is more complicated, but it also primarily narrative and minigames. As such, it seems they're using Early Access for the right reasons: They know this is a game with a lot of interlocking mechanics and things they need to figure out, so they're making sure those creases are ironed out as they go. Now, with that out of the way? Game good. Game very good. The mechanics are your normal bullet heaven fair, but with 2 key twists. Firstly, it uses a deckbuilding system. I know, I know, an indie game that uses deckbuilding, daring today aren't we? But where it interacts with the bullet heaven aspect is where things get interesting. Your cards are your main way of upgrading your weapons, and can be moved between different weapons fairly fluidly, allowing you to easily alter your build later on in your run. You might start out giving one weapon a card that increases how many projectiles it fires, only to then get another weapon you realise it will be far more useful on, and switch it over to that. There's also cards that upgrade the weapons to the sides of yours, encouraging you to think about how you position them in your hand. This does a lot for adding flexibility to your runs! The second difference is that this game is also a bullet Hell game, especially when it gets to its boss fights, which all have their own 'last word' final patterns that you need to survive once you beat them. However, the major draw for this game is absolutely the characters and the aesthetics. If you've seen Astralshifts other works, you know what you're getting into. Extremely 90's inspired shoujo aesthetics with a lot of fun characters and a healthy serving of women who really, really love women, all done in a way that is lavishly beautiful. What makes this unique is them combining it with what is a (seemingly) solidly well researched take on Dante's Inferno, as well as some definite magical girl influences seeping in. The characters themselves are relatively simple thus far (since we only have the first 2 levels at the time of writing), but they're definitely fun and have clearly more beneath the surface than just being archetypes. And I do need to emphasise the fun - the game isn't afraid of not taking itself seriously, and those kinds of moments happening as the characters bounce off each other always manages to make me smile a little. TL;DR, Game good. There's plenty of unique takes on things you've probably seen before, and I really really want to see where Astralshift takes the game as it goes on. Whilst there's definitely rough edges, given time to refine itself, I think this has the potential to be something very interesting.