Short and very sweet, Nebulock shares many similarities with the young(ish) genre of short incrementals, which is also why it caught my eye. It feels kind of like a cousin to the genre, although it is definitely NOT an incremental game. Despite this, the game has more than enough merit on its own though, and it occupies a similar enough space to short incrementals that I would encourage anyone who is into them (or at least, the more active ones) to give this game a try. Nebulock truly subscribes to the ideal of "Here for a good time, not a long time" and man is it a good time.
As is evident by the trailer and description, Nebulock is a bullet hell game, and one that isn't exactly afraid to pull its punches either. Especially early on, when you lack many of the later defensive upgrades. You can expect a real (if still pretty brief overall) challenge on the harder difficulties. If you are fighting bosses on the same tier of upgrades that you have, you generally are only able to take 1~4 hits at most before you unlock any of the regeneration upgrades later in the game, and the bullet patterns can be pretty tight.
While the bullet hell gameplay is the foundation that Nebulock is built on, its main claim to fame actually comes in the form of its destructible enemy system. Every enemy you fight is ultimately made up of many individual blocks that combine to take the shape of an enemy. Each of these blocks has its own health, and potentially also houses a weapon too. These blocks must also have a direct connection back down the chain that leads to the core of the enemy, and if this connection is severed then all unconnected blocks die out regardless of their remaining health. This leads to some interesting design where enemies have weakpoints that you can shoot to destroy large chunks at once, or for the player to be able to make decisions on trying to destroy weapons to make the fight easier, or to focus on the core to try and end the fight faster. That sounds great, but unfortunately, the execution on either of those two ideas wasn't exactly perfect, and so it doesn't really work out every time. Regardless of that, the enemy design is often still pretty creative, and it is still quite fun and satisfying to see your enemies start to shrink over time as you slowly wear them down.
The game is divided into 5 different sections, and in each section you fight about 5 normal enemies and then a "guardian" who acts as the section's main boss. After you beat the guardian you unlock the next section of the game, which introduces a new type of block to fight and unlocks a new kind of currency to buy more powerful upgrades with. Each section of the game also follows a general theme when it comes to the enemy design and upgrades you get. For example, the defining feature of the blue blocks/enemies of section 2 is that they have much more health than the red blocks. This doesn't sound very special on its on, but it leads to the enemies now having armor in the form of chunks of blue blocks, which are then connected by weakpoints made out of a handful of red blocks, leading to you being able to shoot the weakpoints to avoid having to grind through the tough blue armor. The section 2 enemies also use different weapons to attack, preferring to use a combination of bombs and ramming compared to the more basic bullet attacks from section 1. Finally, the signature upgrades bought with the blue currency are the bouncing bullet upgrades (to help reach further into the gaps of the armor to hit weakpoints), explosive bullet upgrades (general damage and also for weakpoints), missile upgrades (likewise also primarily used for weakpoints), and drones (general DPS and provides more angles to hit weakpoints) Each section also has its own music, which helps build onto the theming they were going for with each section, and I found all the tracks to be both pleasant to listen to, and appropriate for the section.
Lastly we have the upgrade tree, which alongside the graphics of the game is where it is most related to the short incremental genre. It is pretty small and compact overall, owing to the short nature of the game in general, but I think that in this case it works in the game's favor. For the majority of the game, you actually have quite a few options as to what you spend your currency on, and it offers a nice balance between offensive, defensive, and economy upgrades. Beyond the number of options you have at your disposal, and perhaps just as important, it offers you great variety when it comes to the different ways to increase your power. Offensively, you have straight damage, damage multipliers, attack speed, more bullets per attack, and then later on more indirect things like explosion damage and drones. There is a little less variety when it comes to the defensive upgrades, but you also don't need as much variety there either, and there is still a very reasonable amount.
To add onto the choice you have in the upgrade tree, most upgrade paths have a "core" upgrade at the end of them. These upgrades tend to be more powerful on average, either offering a bigger stat increase compared to a standard upgrade, acting as a way to get even more of certain premium stats like movespeed, or having a powerful and unique effect in general. You get a core every time you beat a boss for the first time, and you will [b] not [/b] have enough of them to max out every core upgrade until the endgame. This means that you have to pick and choose which ones you want, and much like an incremental game, there is no "un-buying" any upgrade. Depending on your choices, you could have an easier or harder time with some parts of the game. This is most noticeable early on, as you are able to correct past mistakes later once you kill more bosses. However, actually getting to that point could be a little difficult if you skimp out on some of the defensive core upgrades. The movement speed core upgrade in particular is one that I really would advise not skipping out on. I don't think that missing the defensive upgrades would make any boss impossible, but on the whole the defensive ones are more impactful compared to the offensive ones, and some of those early game bosses are pretty hard to begin with.
Really the only sad part is that there isn't more of the game. You will pretty reasonably be able to complete it on the hard difficulty in under 2 hours, and even faster in the subsequent times. There is some added challenge with the permadeath difficulty, but that gives you a large resource multiplier to reduce the grinding, and as long as you play it safe it really isn't too bad either. I have already played through the entire game 4 times, + a few failed permadeath runs, and while it is certainly a replayable game to be sure, once you know the tricks the game just goes by really fast. I think that there is still much to be explored with the current gameplay mechanics, and that the game still has a lot of potential for a good sequel or even DLC. Frankly, they could probably reuse the entire skilltree and just make new enemies and it would still be good. I really have to stress again that for how short the game is, it is REALLY fun to play. If you think you will like it, definitely pick it up. Even if you don't like it, you will probably be able to beat it before 2 hours and refund it if you want . . . You will probably like it though.
