Recent reviews by JBHyperion

Short but sweet Geometry Dash inspired platformer (minus the auto-scrolling aspect). Has some neat mechanics like the rope swing and wall-jumping to offer variety, and whilst only a few aspects of the game truly rely on perception of rhythm, the soundtrack is perfectly fine.

Good to kill half an hour with, or a little longer if you're an achievement hunter. Available for the low cost of nothing and would gladly play again if new levels / features were added later.

It can be quite hard to stand out as a shmup in a somewhat saturated market, but Varstray has a lot going for it that makes it worth picking up in my opinion. The heroines' character designs are amazing and their competition and interactions with one another really drag you into the interesting, if incredibly convoluted - even by shmup standards - story.

There are voiced segments between each of the stages - 12 per route, so great mileage compared to other titles in the genre - where you really get to feel the emotion of each pilot, their thoughts on their mission to save humanity from some kind of self-replicating machine aliens, and most strikingly, each other. Yes, saving all of humanity is now a competition.

As you'd expect, the different ships have varying characteristics and can be outfitted with a handful of different secondary weapons for some nice variety, but the combination of shielding and baryon laser - basically your "super" - mechanics lends itself to a much more aggressive playstyle than a lot of other "weave-through-the-bullet-wall" shooters, which I appreciate. The super basically turns your ship into a black hole and rewards you for smashing into enemies for a limited time, so that's pretty cool

I personally loved the character art, but I can understand why it might be a turn-off for those who are used to the more cute-sy art of other titles, whilst enemy artwork and bullet patterning is slightly above average. Who needs pretty sprites when you're just going to be smashing into them anyway am I right?

Music is varied but mostly upbeat and punchy as you'd expect, achievements are plentiful - and in some cases, hilariously translated - and there's all kinds of mode support for arcade, score attack, competing online against friends, etc. Will admit the mechanics can take a little getting used to, but overall definitely worth picking up if you're looking for something a little different.

Fun little time-waster with simple-to-learn mechanics and a great (albeit limited) soundtrack.

Not a huge fan of the always-random mechanic, since for an advertised "rhythm game", it feels very weird to mash along for 30 seconds in a quiet part only to finally get to the drop and there's occasionally almost nothing to hit. Although randomisation does give additional replay value, I would be very interested to see what curated content would look like with a few extra gameplay mechanics.

That said, it's free and takes up almost no space, so you've nothing to lose by giving this a shot.

Chronology of Floating Point:

- You collide into 20 walls and slow to crawl before finally making it through a bar. You are content.

- You quickly get a hang of the controls and score a few points sailing gracefully across the map. You are entertained.

- You hookshot repeatedly for many minutes and reach incredible speeds, trying to set up the perfect path, then collide with a platform by a millimeter, slow to a crawl, and sigh audibly before resigning to try all over again. You are determined.

- You finally punch the air as you watch yourself sail majestically through space, blasting through gates with incredible precision and racking up hundreds of thousands of points. You are ecstatic.

- You check the score thread and discover someone casually hit a few million in the time it took you to hit one gate, but you don't care because the gameplay is smooth as butter, the ambient sountrack is relaxing, and you can watch back your beutifully intricate, criss-crossed kaleidoscope of trails for eternity. You are addicted.