Ghost Grab 3000 Reviews

Simple, yet brilliant mechanic with a pleasantly surprising level of depth and strategy without over complicating the core arcade style experience. Nice lateral progression system, fun music and sound. All around great little score attack game. GG!

You grab ghost, you chain many ghost, go BOOM, satisfying. Pretty linear progression each "run" where you upgrade your speed, hp, or you beam width as an upgrade (aside from the slight gg customization in menu) very fun time killer. Really like this dev's games.

Came with Dungeon Deathball. Sideways thumb. It's fun for a bit, but could seriously use a balance pass. The totally dominant strategy is to pick the largest battery and fastest chassis possible, charge all over the map with full invincibility while you look for the next safe place to park (on the other edge so that your beam covers the whole screen) and recharge your batteries on bullets, usually staying on your original spot while invincible to bait bullets into that irrelevant position. There's no reason to enter the center of the screen or concern yourself with attacking enemies, and you spend more than half of your time invincible with your current position irrelevant. Almost feels like the proper control scheme would be to hold mouse to not be invincible, anywhere on the map, which smells like a shallower game, so it's not super surprising players get millions or even billions of points. (At time of writing I have 2 hours playtime and 167k points being 16/137 on Hard leaderboards, and honestly figured this strategy out just 30 mins ago) The game intends for you to actually dodge bullets but that's not how it plays out. Finally many upgrades are one-time-use, meaning useless for high-scoring runs, such as max HP and nukes.

This is such a little gem. I often think of games like Qix a lot and I'm always surprised there aren't more games like it, and this feels like a love letter to those old school arcade games, but with some unlockables and more mechanics sprinkled on top. It's an easy recommendation.

The most cheerful game you'll ever play about a robotic grim reaper Pac Man deleting humanity's souls in a bullet hell post-apocalyptic future.

This is a great little arcade style game. It's really focused on the core idea and there isn't a huge amount of content, but the price reflects this, and honestly, it feels agile. Too much extra stuff would probably get in the way of the game. The game just has three levels: easy, medium, hard. The draw here is the unique gameplay. It's a bullet hell, but instead of shooting, you chain together enemies and then blow them all up. Of course all bullet hell games are about positioning and dodging, but this one feels more defensive than offensive as you can't really remove enemies from the screen without sacrificing a huge amount of points - the bigger the chain you build up, the more points you get. So it becomes a balancing act of how big a chain can you make while still being able to dodge both the enemies and their bullets. Of course, if you get in a tight spot you have three special moves, dodge, where you can't be hit, but also can't chain ghosts (although you can bump into ghosts and stun them), EMP, which stuns surrounding enemies, and nuke, which kills all the ghosts on screen. Playing can earn you coins to pick up at the end of each level, which can then buy alternate parts in a shop, each with different stats, some make you have more health but move slower, or less health but faster, or carry extra nukes. It adds a nice variety and lets you lean into a play style slightly. Also, between each level, you can get a buff from a choice of three, such as regain a heart, increase speed, beam width (I love this one), EMP range, or an extra nuke. These add a little bit of a different strategy to each play through, very slightly changing the way you can approach each level - not a lot, but if you choose a slow build, you can increase speed to counteract this a bit. It's great. The mechanics work really well, it ends up being a great little game, it's addicting chasing scores and having one more go. I really recommend this one if you're into arcade style games

[h1]Game Review from 30 Minutes of Play[/h1] Reminding myself if I should revisit and if you should purchase. [b]ELEVATOR PITCH: Bullethell Megaman[/b] LIKED: Easy to learn, hard to master gameplay. Love the pixel art and chip-tune throwback. DISLIKED: Starting levels can get tedious causing some early mistakes in what would be perfect play. [b]===== Mood After 30mins =====[/b] ☑ Addicted ☐ Afternoon delight ☐ Grindfest ☐ Frustrated [b]===== Will I Revisit =====[/b] ☑ Yes, I aim to 100% complete ☐ Yes, but only beat the game ☐ Eventually. Until then, back to the pile ☐ No, on to other games [b]===== Price =====[/b] ☑ Full price worthy ☐ Discount ☐ Deep discount ☐ Pass [b]Disclaimer:[/b] [i]I'm aware 30 minutes is not enough time to properly review any game. Historically, I'm a big completionist when it comes to gaming, but my backlog will just not die and adulting obligations continue to mount. I needed to find some sense of accomplishment with my backlog other than buying them at great discount. Dedicating at least 30 minutes of play per game will be my arbitrary sense of achievement. It may not justify my gaming spending habits, but I'll suffer less buyer's remorse. Who knows, in 30 minutes I might discover a great game I want to revisit and something you want to purchase. GGs![/i] ====================== [h1]Postmortem Review[/h1] [b]LIKED THE MOST:[/b] Addictive gameplay deserves turned into an arcade. Enjoyable chiptunes which are Megaman-like. [b]DISLIKED THE MOST:[/b] The sound of getting hit, the grind of climbing past the beginning/warm up levels. [b]===== If I Could Speak To Myself Prior To Playing =====[/b] Non-spoilers: I did not know I could stun enemies by boosting into them. Stop playing easy mode and start with normal mode. TIPS WARNING SPOILERS! [spoiler]Not all the unlocks are worthwhile.[/spoiler] [b]===== Gameplay Mood Tracker =====[/b] [i]Methodology borrowed from Partasan Spy's [URL=https://www.spygamereviews.com/]spygamereviews[/URL][/i] [LIST] [*]0.5-1.0 hours: Addicted [*]1.0-1.5 hours: Normal (started to feel grind) [*]1.5-2.0 hours: Addicted (realized I should play on harder difficulty) [*]2.0-2.5 hours: Addicted (better mastery of character abilities) [*]2.5-3.0 hours: Addicted (focused on score chasing) [*]3.0-3.5 hours: Normal (100% the achievements)[/LIST] [b]WHEN ADDICTED:[/b] Honeymoon period of the game, having fun pulling long combos, figuring out how to use character abilities better, not hanging around easy mode. [b]WHEN NORMAL:[/b] Although not as fun, achievement chasing to 100%. [b]WHEN BORED:[/b] Grinding at easy mode unknowingly there are more fun modes if played at normal difficulty. [b]===== Worth Revisiting? =====[/b] Yes, I want to occasionally revisit this game to see if I can get a personal best. [b]===== Wish It Had... =====[/b] Multiplayer co-op mode, a multiplayer mode where one controls an enemy like in Crawl, time challenges, sandbox mode to experiment with insane combos and ghost scenarios, an ability to skip the initial stages if you perfect clear that stage three times in a row.

- Epic chiptune soundtrack evoking nostalgia! - Fast-paced and tactical bullet hell gameplay. Refreshingly innovative! Never seen this before! - It's fun to link enemies up for an ultra combo while dodging their bullets and managing your energy meter! Very recommended little indie game!

This game is [b]so good[/b] that I wonder why most people didn't discover it yet. Specially people who don't want to waste countless hours in front of the machine. It is an exquisite casual just to decompress from daily BS... Three minutes and you are reinvigorated once again, unless you aren't... I don't mean you won't waste countless hours in front of the machine, it is quite probable if you have a weak will and nothing else to do. Matt Glanville's games have a soul and superb dynamics at every level. You get to love meaningless characters without an actual story arc and even the nonsensical psychomotor skills you need to develop in order to endure. Anyways, this is some kind of a back to the future thing with this games 'cause you get "nostalgia" without the lack of creativity part! And the fun thing is you get to collect coins from time to time in order to up your game in the robot store. [b]Edit:[/b] Now I have unlocked all of the achievements! I can play another game now! As a wise raper used to say, "b!tch' gotta have ma' money". It works very well on Linux and demands very little system resources by the way

Simple but engaging idea for gameplay, cute graphics and melodious soundtrack. Really good formula for some fun for short bursts of time! Gets a bit repetitive after a while but the levels are hard the longer you play. Probably depends if you're into that style of graphics but i'd say it's worth the price, especially if it's on sale.