I’ve at all times had a better time enjoying ‘bullet hell’ shooters than extra old-school ones like Devil Engine, which launched at this time. Enemies in these previous shmups had been positively ornery of their aggression, continually pressuring the participant with unpredictable mix-up assaults. Among one of the best of that late 16-bit period of capturing was Technosoft’s Thunder Force sequence. Protoculture Games’s debut seems like a proud tribute to these twitchy gems, full with an deliberately restricted color palette, however just a few concepts of its personal. See the trailer beneath or snag a demo on Steam here.
While Devil Engine doesn’t allow you to swap weapons freely as some Thunder Force games did, it does can help you modify your ship’s pace between three settings. On high of pickups for spread-machine-gun, homing vitality and straight laser weaponry (which could be powered up by grabbing extra of the identical power-up kind), you’ve a beneficiant inventory of smart-bombs. Unlike most shooters, they don’t render you invulnerable or clear the display screen, however fireplace a extra highly effective model of your present weapon, and are nice for burning down bosses or larger enemies rapidly.
Devil Engine’s largest twist is the Burst Shield. You can filter all close by bullets (beams and different chunky laser assaults are unaffected) everytime you like. The burst recharges each two seconds, so you may actually skinny out denser patterns of fireside. The solely down-side to utilizing the burst protect is that it resets your rating multiplier, however in the event you clear sufficient bullets in a single utilization of it, you may typically find yourself with a better multiplier than you had earlier than. It’s an attention-grabbing danger/reward system for gamers chasing excessive scores, though I’m simply centered on beating the game for now.
Special credit score goes to Devil Engine’s music. On high of the game sharing lots of that basic Thunder Force really feel, they introduced in Technosoft composer Hyakutaro Tsukumo to provide just a few tracks. The relaxation was carried out by Qwesta (discover them here on Twitter), who beforehand did a few of the music for ZeroRanger, one in every of my top games of 2018. The end result is a good soundtrack that jogs my memory lots of some Sega Saturn greats, from when game music nonetheless had a little bit of that old-school sound, however was not restrained by on-board sound chips – sturdy melodies, highly effective synth guitars.
While I’ve solely had time to play somewhat of Devil Engine up to now, it appears to be like like there’s a bit extra to it than simply the six common ranges, which is sweet, as that’d go away it somewhat on the brief aspect. On high of the preliminary Easy and Hard modes, there’s an Expert mode unlockable, and a few alternate modes (and perhaps some further ships) with their very own on-line leaderboards. There’s additionally a sequence of bonus problem missions, launched from the primary menu – the primary of which asks you to not let a single enemy escape the display screen alive. It’s a enjoyable solution to combine up in what seems like a really proficient shooter.
Devil Engine is out now on Steam for £13.94/€15.11/$17.99, with a free demo obtainable on the shop web page too. It’s printed by Dangen Entertainment.
