GunVein - Expert ALL Clear / 1CC - 10,5 Million (Type C)
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Very good new shmup that just came out.
Gunvein was developed and published by NGDEV, who you might know for games like NEO XYX and Razion. Games made for the Neo-Geo and -only- the Neo-Geo. Gunvein actually got released on Steam though, with it coming out on PS4 and Switch later down the line.
Now I said NGDEV is the developer, but this game is mostly the brainchild of boghog, who is a long-standing member of the community and someone who really loves shmups and knows what makes them tick. Inspired by games from CAVE, Taito and Raizing, it plays very much like some of the best arcade shmups.
I ended up putting way more time into this game than I thought I would.
Game is very fun to play and figuring out how to optimize the score was also very engaging.
System:
- You can only carry three lives and three bombs at a time, which creates an interesting dynamic as you can't really hoard resources.
- You need 10 bomb fragments to create a bomb, unlike some Raizing games, you can't use partial bombs.
- You can however use 5 fragments to activate a hyper.
- In Expert you get an extend every 600k points, if you already have max lives when that happens you get a 1-hit shield instead.
- You can also shoot some stuff in the background to uncover bomb fragments.
- Gold bomb fragments give you about 1 second of i-frames.
- If you press both the shot and focus buttons twice at the same time you can cancel all i-frames you currently have.
Scoring:
Scoring is basically bombing enemies and speedkilling them when you're not bombing.
Score gives you more bomb fragments which gives you more bombs for more scoring.
You can only have three lives in stock at a time, and dying fills up the first bomb slot, so dying on purpose is also a big strategy for score. You actually don't want the shield in this case as it makes SD'ing more difficult.
The same technically applies to bosses and midbosses, but it's generally more beneficial to milk the extra enemies they spawn.
Hypers are generally strictly for survival, they don't spawn the gold stars like normal bombs do.
There is a hidden enemy value multiplier that increases with every bomb fragment you collect, so getting tons of fragments quickly is also very important.
Ships:
Type C is a very fun ship with a very unique and satisfying shot.
You build up a strong bomb in front of you and drop it on enemies for major damage. If you build it up all the way it will even launch forward until it hits something. Feels a bit like the Pink Sweets rose cracker but without it cancelling any bullets.
It's a very strong ship too and easily the strongest shot in the game, it's very good at speedkilling enemies. Though the bomb is very weak and doesn't last long, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's ideal for milking the stage 4 boss for example, which is the most lucrative milk in the game. The i-frames also last for like 5 seconds which is kinda ludicrous.
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I lost about 300k in stage 5 in this run, so 11 million is probably possible.
You can also milk the stage 3 boss's first two phases but it's only worth like 100k and it's incredibly long and dangerous to do.
This game might have an overabundance of i-frames.
Bombs give i-frames, shields give i-frames, hypers give i-frames, gold fragments give i-frames, in a system where you want to SD a lot you can kinda see where that might be a problem.
All the complaining actually let boghog to implement what is basically a self-destruct button in a patch, which is pretty hilarious.
The game itself is not too bad to clear, even on Expert because of this. Hypers are also insanely powerful and for only 5 fragments really cheap to use. Once you start scoring you'll also be showered in resources. For a 10 million score I basically got 17 lives and like 80 bombs.
The biggest negative you can probably say about the game is that in terms of presentation it might come over a bit bland, as it doesn't really stand out.
Besides "very good shmup gameplay" there is not much else for people to grab on to here. There is no worldbuilding or context for anything you do, and there aren't any particularity unique or memorable set pieces. The music slaps though.
Also the game might be too easy???
Easy candidate for SOTY (Shmup Of The Year).
Buy the game on Steam here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2025840/Gunvein/
Intro - 00:00
Stage 1 - 00:30
Stage 2 - 03:41
Stage 3 - 10:33
Stage 4 - 14:30
Stage 5 - 20:49
Credits - 26:48
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