Xelan Force - Hard 1CC No-Miss (9,467,900)
6A new game by PiXEL, creator of Horgihugh & Space Runaway. The game was made in 3 months for Retro Game Summit held back in November 2023. The Steam version came out 3 months later with bugfixes and 2 new stages. The Switch version will come out at the end of the month.
A mix of Crisis Force and Star Force with a little bit of Compile, not too challenging (the shield can take a lot of damage), but there are some gotcha moments. The purple enemies that come from behind always come from the edges of the screen, following the right then left pattern, with rare moments having them come from both sides.
Hard Difficulty only increases rank faster and enemies more aggressive, which means you'll see those homing enemies spawning in a lot more. Caravan is just Hamster ACA rules, where you play through the first stage and then use the leftover time for the beginning of the second one, but instead of 5 minutes, it's 3 minutes.
Buy the game here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2690610/XELAN_FORCE/