Galactic Dancing
This game felt very much at home among titles like Blazing Star and Alpha Mission II on my brand spankin' new Neo Ge- I mean Nintendo Switch. Though it's sherbet palate and paper craft-adjacent aesthetic set it apart visually from those titles, the gameplay principles are the same: you are going to get assaulted by bug-like enemies and will have to fly all over the joint guns blazing.
The boards change between closed off arenas and looping, linear maps (like Ms. Pac-Man gliding through the tunnel on the right side of the screen and ending up on the left). The levels, broken into 2-3 phases each, go through a minor evolution with each phase. While the aesthetic pops at first glance, both the look of the game and level design become rather repetitive. Four planets at 10 levels a pop may have been a tad much, but the hook here is the challenge. And this shit gets tough as nails.
There is a very old-school challenge to this game and a very carefully honed difficulty curve. There's a great amount of depth to the combat for a shoot-em-up of this nature, as well. With four different attacks (all on an overheat/cooldown mechanic), a defensive move (also on a cooldown meter), and a flip-flopping aiming mechanic (your L-trigger changes aim from left to right), your thumbs will get little rest. The game's roster of enemies evolves with each planet setting up a hierarchy of which enemies you should spend your special attacks on and take down first. Chain kills quickly (almost too quickly) to jack that combo multiplier up and watch the numbers fly. Lose a life, lose your score, but each level's phase breaks will offer a checkpoint. Early on in the game, a perfect run on any given board is difficult as hell, but by the end of the game, just finishing a level with a D grade feels like a monumental accomplishment.
Issues with the aesthetic aside (and minor problems with the game's most finest of tuning in the difficulty department), there's a bit of old school magic in this game that really grabs me. It handles like a dream in portable mode when curled up on the couch or tucked in bed. There were times where I wanted to spike the goddamn thing out of frustration, but I kind of love that feeling.
