Let’s be clear - Gunvein is very much a purebred bullet hell shooter.
Equally, it’s eagerly encouraging.
That’s not to say it is anything like a watered down shooting game; far from it.
That’s not to say Gunvein is simply derivative.
Need to know when your maximum allocation of homing missiles have found a suitable target, for example?
A distinct sonic ping will tell you just that.
On the matter of visual flair, the bullet patterns and broader level design elements here are consistently exceptional.
They also do a great many mesmeric things that push you to be an agile, adaptable pilot.
And that is where Gunvein excels.
But not so for Gunvein.
At a fundamental level the scoring works like this.
Quick kills fill a metre.
Each time that metre tops out, a collectible bomb fragment is dropped.
Collect enough bomb fragments, and you get a bomb.
And then it’s back to earning more bomb fragments, and starting the core loop again.
Yet things are just a shade slower than as seen in Ketsui and its ilk.
The game itself locks its online leaderboards to ten players each.
you might, meanwhile, head to Steam’s leaderboard page for the game to see all your scores.
That presents something irresistible to pursue; to get listed in the game, rather than around it.
Each has a distinct balance of firepower, speed and lock-on range.
All of that means there’s plenty of different play styles and scoring strategies to explore.
Roguelike arrange has you covered, and should delight those less obsessively committed to the purity of shooters.
Ultimately, Gunvein takes a very familiar form.
If you want something that reinvents its genre, you might want to look elsewhere.
So many modern shooting games tumble from that Cave-crafted genre template.
Gunvein is one of the absolute best of that vast group.
