Normally if I play a game on Steam and want to post a review, I just post it there. But I've tried to post a review for this game a few times this afternoon and it's just not working, so I'll post it here instead. :)
It's a fun little shoot-em-up by Triangle Service, originally part of the "Shooting Love, 200X" compilation, and is currently in Steam's big "Shoot-em-up sale", priced at £1.19 including 25% discount.
Really liking this game. I mean, REALLY liking it. Despite its limitations and the fact it's really bare bones, it's a good fun game.
So what do you do in this game?
You control a little triangle, and a small way in front of you, there's a reticle. In each level, circular enemies appear, and they might fire bullets. If your triangle touches an enemy or a bullet while you are not invincible (i.e. when it's coloured blue), it's GAME OVER. And then it uploads your score to the leaderboard.
You can lock onto both the enemies and their bullets with the reticle, and fire at them. Firing at the enemies shoots out triangles that blasts your targets away in joyful, pretty explosions, and also makes your little triangle invincible for a short amount of time (your triangle turns red to indicate your invincibility).
Eventually an enemy that's a red circle will appear, and if you destroy that, you move onto the next level.
So why not just fire non-stop and be invincible all the time?
Well, you can only fire when you've locked onto something, and you're only invincible while the explosions are exploding, so if you only target a few things, you risk getting hit while waiting for your missiles to land, and if there are few explosions you aren't invincible for very long at all! Also, in the bottom left of the screen, there's a number displayed. It slowly increases over time. That number is the number of points you get for an enemy explosion. So if you stick around and don't fire at the enemies directly, the amount of points you can get from the level increases - but the enemies will begin to fire more and more bullets. You can also score points from locking onto and firing at bullets. So you need to strike the balance of when to fire at enemies, and when to stick around waiting for them to fire more and more bullets for the points you can accrue, instead. I'm getting vaguely "Every Extend" vibe from the emergent gameplay.
So what are the limitations of the game?
It does what it does, and that's it. Game, Leaderboards. Very brief tutorial under "options". Barely any customisation in options - you can toggle the screen size between 1.0 and 1.5 (it's always low resolution, and windowed - there's no full-screen mode), and toggle the language between English and Japanese. Though - it's not like there's any crazy story mode to read, no cut scenes to watch - nothing like that.
The music and backgrounds in the game start off silent / plain and grow incrementally on every level, which also means if you're stuck on the first few levels, you don't get to hear very much music, and the backgrounds are very plain (but perhaps this is a blessing; it means the player is not overwhelmed when starting out).
I also think that a level select (perhaps without leaderboard support, if it unbalances things too much) would have been a nice touch.
What does the game do right?
It's got that "ah! just one more go!" factor just right. It's got 360 joypad support. No problems with the controls. The leaderboards are done well enough that they are an incentive to improve your score, but are generally unintrusive enough to not get in the way.
