Description
*Pew*Pew*Pew*...
While perusing Steam's summer sale, I inadvertently came across a developer known as "Discade Project" while doing a last-minute inspection of my shopping cart. You know how they advertise games towards the bottom based on similar games you've played or potential preferences? Well, my wishlist is a mile long because I keep learning about games that seem to be in my wheelhouse as someone who really loves indie games! A title known as "Total Chaos Against Apathy" was shown to me and it looked like how it sounded -- the game was a chaotic frenzy of simplicity and violence and it seemed like jank and brilliance at the same time. Out of curiosity, I went into the dev's profile and checked out their other games. Then I went to their personal website (which seemed kinda buggy btw, it kept timing out and I almost thought it didn't work) and learned a little more about the team, lmao and all. The page was vulgar, amateurish and unapologetic. I finally came back to Steam and bought all their games.
Why am I telling you this? Because this team proves that you don't need great art, proper advertising or even mainstream appeal as long as you have a vision, and if they can get started in this industry and get their works published on Steam, I implore anyone with talent or even a passing interest in game development to do the same. Oh, and their games are just plain "fun", which is also super important. If you haven't guessed it already, today's game is NOT "Total Chaos Against Apathy", but their first listed Steam game, a 2021 horizontal SHMUP simply titled "ESTEN". If there's a story, I was hard-pressed to find one; there's a tiny bit of visual storytelling, but the bulk of the dialogue comes from the tutorial where the game takes some influence from Jun'ya Ōta's (aka ZUN) "Touhou Project". There's some squiggly alien-like creatures you contend with, and you're apparently in cyberspace or something like it. Just go make the enemies dead.
ESTEN's whole premise is going from left to right while shooting down everything in sight. All major enemies must be destroyed before you can advance to the next zone and the game has a minimalistic and unobtrusive design which I can actually appreciate here (have you noticed there's basically no HUD?). Anything of importance is tucked away in a little sub-menu (Battle Menu) and your health and "grazing points" will only pop up when necessary. "Grazing Points" are accumulated whenever you come within close proximity of projectiles and serves two purposes: the first is to serve as fuel to activate one of four special powers when full and the second is to reward the player with extra XP (basically currency here) when in excess of 100% to incentivize using special powers only when absolutely necessary. XP can be used to purchase ability upgrades between levels (Health, Speed and Power) and powers are obtained by defeating optional mini-bosses.
ESTEN is not an easy game, but it is a relatively low-stress game; it is very much a bullet-hell game that ramps up quickly in difficulty, but it seems to have unlimited continues and the player can advance with enough perseverance. There are two basic attacks that are either long-range bullets or short-range shotgun focus blasts. By leveling up your power, you can get more options to follow you around and you can also lock on to enemies. At first, I thought this was a bit limiting until I realized the game wanted you to approach it a particular way with one mechanic that is conveniently not explained in the tutorial: Combos. To execute a proper combo, you have to take down three or more enemies with a focus blast in a short period of time. Long range bullets can take down fragile enemies and increase the timer, but you can't properly do combos unless you kill enemies with the shotgun blast. If you go around and stop shooting or run out of time, you can complete the combo but if you get hit while it's active, you will drop the whole sequence. Combos generate bonus experience but also pushes the player to engage in an elegant risk/rewards dance of aggressive gameplay.
The powers at your disposal are fairly hard to utilize as increasing graze points to 100 is a bit harder than it sounds, but all of them are useful in a pinch. "Armor Install" increases your endurance by making you temporarily invulnerable, "Missile Install" is a powerful ability that wipes out many enemies (useful on the later levels if you find it difficult to advance), "Time Install" slows gameplay down and "Reflect" does whats on the tin. The graphics are super simple but the contrasting colors make everything easy to identify and the music is actually pretty rad. The game is only $1 and basically impossible not to recommend, but the game is still good even on its own merits. This is a vid of the game in action. You can get it at:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1700600/ESTEN/
Enjoy.
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