A good game cursed with incredibly bad mechanics
On the heels of Geometry Wars, Bullet Candy is a dual joystick shooter that involves shooting down enemies in an arena while avoiding bumping into them and their bullets. This general premise, which you'd think would be so easy to pull off as there are so many good models out there, is unfortunately executed very poorly in this game.
There are numerous borderline broken things that drastically detract from the gameplay experience, which makes this title, even at $3.99 seem like a ripoff. First off, the shooting mechanic is extremely awkward. You move the ship around with the WASD keys, and aim with your mouse. the main problem with this is, there are so many enemies onscreen and the mouse movement is so sensitive that you just end up randomly shaking the mouse around, often to no great effect as your bullets greatly outnumber the enemies', and so you'll often have trouble seeing the bullets you should be avoiding.
Many shooter staples such as powerups and bombs are also missing. Bombs are wholly absent and powerups seem to come and go randomly. Sometimes you'll be on an extremely easy level with full triple spread, while on the next level your powerup is removed unexplained, replaced with a single weak shot, resulting in your death.
The game is also very difficult, but not for the right reasons. On each level there are about 5-6 indestructible steel balls that follow you around. If you bump into one, you die. The problem is, you always spawn with them surrounding you, so if you try to dodge any fire upon spawning, you bump into them and die anyway. With the games already awkard controls, this just makes it worse. Over half the time, you'll die without even knowing how simply because the steel balls always remain so ridiculously close to you. They also block your fire, so since they are around you all the time this makes it impossible to gun down enemy ships.
To add insult to injury the second to last level can't be beaten without getting a huge amount of luck. You spawn and 20 shurikens eject out of the wall and kill you instantly. If you try to dodge, you're killed by the steel balls, and a dozen enemy ships are chasing and shooting after you too.
Unlike games like Geometry Wars, or even shooters in general, Bullet Candy doesn't even give you the tools or the room to win, let alone have fun with it. If you see this game on Steam and its low 3.99 price tag, please steer clear, it's not worth even that.