BLUE REVOLVER

What sets Blue Revolver apart from the modern indie shmup is the macro considerations that you'll make while playing. Particularly the 'difficulty' section of the HUD, in the top right corner.

The game has all the standard incentives to attempt to score well for the average (less hardcore) STG player, in that scoring = lives = I survive longer = Maybe I can beat the game this time. But what is somewhat unique (I know it's not technically unique, I know arcade shmups of the 80s and 90s featured adaptive difficulty aka rank, but I am still a fledgling in this genre and do not have that prior knowledge or exp) is that scoring also increases your difficulty.

What this really amounts to is that, on the Hyper difficulty (Normal difficulty is capped at Difficulty 2), you're naturally incentivized to master/score well on the earlier, easier parts, and this takes some amount of time, and once you've done this, you're now at a higher difficulty level than you had ever previously been when you get to the next part. This creates a kind of extended mastery curve. The first time I really reckoned with this I was grinding stage 1 on Hyper until I had perfected the score route for it and, uh oh, now I'm at difficulty 4 on the stage 1 boss' final pattern, oh gosh the bullets are faster, holy shit I did the break and now there's this shotgun bullet spray to dodge and it's random what cardinal or intercardinal it starts at and woah, I'm dead cuz I haven't seen that before and it's overwhelming.

This exact kind of scenario carries through to basically every single segment of the game from the stage 1 boss onward if you're going for score (aka survival?) on Hyper. Trajectories, speeds, quantities, entirely new additions, the developer has found a way to ratchet patterns up steadily as you ascend each adaptive difficulty. As I improved, when I enter a segment that I know is mildly challenging, I look at the adaptive difficulty, and prepare accordingly. Another mechanic is that the only way to lower the adaptive difficulty is to lose a life, and you have a great reason to want to sacrifice yourself in this way: Difficulty 5. Diff 5, the most insane and crazy and maximal difficulty, doesn't always auto-decrement on death to a lower difficulty, but it does decay naturally over time, about a minute and some change of time by my estimation. So for that one minute and some change, you have a much higher chance to lose a life unintentionally just cuz the patterns are so much harder, and you're not really 'saved' by your death either; you have to live for as long as it takes to get to Diff 4, then you can die 'more safely' in this sense. Because there's this "oh god oh no" terrible end state for you if you play well, you now have an incentive to:
1. Score enough to have enough lives/resources in general (as bombs and special weapon ammo reload on death) to make it through the game based on your skill level and your overall macro-level plan for scoring/bomb usage throughout a run.
2. But don't score too much or you'll make it way harder

Which, initially upon realizing this was the right way to play, I found it annoying or weird as fuck. But I admired the degree of sadomasochism involved with such a system and was not daunted, not for long anyway. It took about 30 hours to clear Hyper mode for the first time and one of the things this adaptive difficulty system does is deepen my appreciation for the game. I played Normal after clearing Hyper (I believe I played Normal on my initial play of the game but didn't care for it because of the Autobomb shield, I want to be in control of my own resources at all times) and cleared it on the first play pretty effortlessly. If I had simply played Normal and stopped there to begin with, I think I wouldn'tve liked the game nearly as much. What Hyper does is makes you appreciate how intelligently all the bullet patterns are layered on top of each other and how their various permutations based on difficulty are spooky but still survivable (lest you're on Diff 5 with some patterns, gulp). Some other review mentioned this is a good place to go after ZeroRanger and that sounds accurate to me; Blue Revolver is the natural next step for indie shmuppers getting their feet wet who want to see what a more ruthless experience might be like. In a good way. I promise it's in a good way. ZeroRanger is rather forgiving comparatively (and it kind of has to be because it's a 45 minute long run versus BR's ~28 minute long run). I would recommend to those who are buying this to not just stop after clearing Normal, you need to play Hyper. That's where the special sauce is, that's where the game's mechanics really come alive and you're being much more considerate of your every move and such. Hyper is where respect is born.

I purchased this based on a recommendation by The Electric Underground. Not only is this a great shooter but it has options that would make M2 think, " are we putting enough options in our games?". I'm a beginner in shooter terms but on normal i managed to get to the final level after 3 plays on normal difficulty so don't be put off thinking it will be too hard and therefore not fun. The music is also banging and i loved the nod to other shooters like Battle Garegga and Under defeat.

Nice game, nice music, nice and defined art style with a very particular color palette, interesting mechanics.

first shmup i've ever played, finally beat normal mode after 7 hours, still feels like i've barely scratched the surface.
the break and perfect score systems are some of my favorite mechanics i've ever experienced in a game. nothing feels quite like getting a tough break or phase perfect for the first time.
slowly beginning to dominate parts of the game i struggled with feels just as good as fighting and clawing through those difficulty spikes the first time.
music is excellent and is synced up with the gameplay which leads to incredible moments.
really appreciate the option to turn down the saturation and brightness of the background, although i wish the custom colors for bullets stood out a bit more compared to the defaults.
feels great to play a game where sessions that are under an hour feel as rewarding as multiple hour sessions in most other games.
love love love this game to bits, could easily (and probably will) see myself putting hundreds of more hours into this game.

I think the game is great. Nice music and simple scoring mechanic.

A nit pick and personal taste issue that the game is very close to Saidaioujou like bullet hell. The game's difficulty comes from speed and the size of the bullet. In a way the game feels like a combination of Saidaioujou and OG Donpachi but with scoring mechanic of Ketsui. Personally I didn't enjoy Saidaioujou because everything just seemed too big and clustered on screen, and the game reminds me of that. The bullet speed is also really fast even on the lowest difficulty which makes me think that this game is more geared towards memorization-reflex based shmup rather than strategic shmup.

While OST musics are great, the sound effect feels very flat. Every explosion sounds more like a light slap to the face.

I also wish they spent little more effort in enemy designs. Most of them looks bit like a tissue box.

Despite the negativity I felt like the game is worth its price. It has a lot game modes and unlockables.

Overview:
Blue Revolver is a vertical shoot-'em-up, drawing inspiration from classic arcade shooters, it combines traditional gameplay with modern features to appeal to both newcomers and seasoned players.

Players can choose from three distinct characters, each offering unique weapons and playstyles. The game features five stages set in diverse environments, culminating in challenging boss battles. One of its standout features is the adaptive difficulty system, which tailors the game's challenge to the player's skill level, ensuring a balanced experience for everyone. Additionally, the Missions mode provides 25 single-stage challenges designed to refine players' skills and introduce various gameplay scenarios.

-» Gameplay: Three characters and 12 special weapons, players can experiment with different strategies and find playstyles that suit them best. The hitbox seems flawless which is a big plus to make the gameplay feel smooth
-» Soundtrack and sound effects: Designed to create a sense of urgency and excitement, with fast-paced rhythms that match the high-stakes nature of the gameplay. It’s both catchy and ear friendly
-» Graphics: An art style including elements both vibrant and clear, making it easy to distinguish between incoming projectiles during intense moments.
-» Bosses: Some bosses will unleash powerful desperation attacks when they are near death. These attacks are often screen-filling or involve patterns that require quick thinking and precise movements to avoid. These intense moments elevate the stakes of each boss fight and provide a thrilling conclusion to the encounters.
-» Replayability: The Missions Mode provide 25 single-stage challenges that can be replayed for mastery. These not only test players’ ability to avoid bullets and defeat enemies but also encourage experimenting with different weapons and tactics
-» Difficulty: The dynamic adjustment ensures that players face a suitable level of challenge, promoting a sense of progression without overwhelming them. I would argue, that much like Batsugun, this is a perfect entry for the bullet hell titles pool.
-» Bullet style: frequently the screen is crammed with a dense array of bullets. However, the game also provides areas of relative safety, where the player can maneuver through openings in the patterns. I felt a suitable balance was reached here for a mere, but commited mortal, to surppass.

Cons:

SUMMARY:
9.1/10 gaming scale


Final Thoughts: It successfully merges classic shoot-'em-up elements with modern design principles, offering a rewarding experience for both newcomers and veteran players. Its engaging gameplay mechanics make it a standout title. Whether you're seeking a nostalgic trip or a fresh challenge, its's a commendable choice. After clearing the main campaign and, as I comeback for new sessions or new updates arise by developers, I intend to keep revising this review.

buy buy buy

As long as you are remotely interested in Sh'mup, you have to buy this game. I say this as someone used to think "Shmup won't be my cup of tea". It's among the greatest entries of this genre while being really affordable. Why not buy?

Since I would probably keep being a newbie in the foreseeable future and there are already really good analysis from actual veterans I'll keep my review to the neophyte perspective: lowest difficulty is a great place for newcomers to pick up; control is engaging, soundtrack is epic, so you will still have a blast even when you have a hard time beating stages; in-game objectives are great motivation for you to imrpove; stage select allowing you to practice certain parts of it helps greatly.
Also the tutorial system is legit and very useful, not those usual kind of "press move button to walk forward" BS.

Still a steal at full price. You won't regret. Should've been the game of the year :)

Instant classic!

Lots of modes, 3 very different ships, great music, 120hz and tate modes. Buy it!

Touhou if it was even more epic

120 FPS MODE UPDATE 🤯

The fact that this game got a MAJOR update 8 years after it came out is completely and utterly ridiculous. 99% of developers would have just slapped a new color palette on and called it BLUE REVOLVER 2. I recommend watching The Electric Underground's review of the update on YouTube, he covers everything far better than I can. Long story short, if you haven't bought this game, now is the time to do so.

One of the best Shmups of all time. The scoring is easy to get into thanks to it's approachable design and the relatively easy scoring goals in many of the mission mode levels. Also, mission mode is genius in general since it slowly ramps up between tiers and essentially teaches you how to score and helps to slowly raise your skills until you are ready to 1cc hyper mode. It also forces you try out a variety of ship/character combinations and I would've never expected to like some of the shot types like Val's stasis field if the mission mode didn't make me learn how to use it.

Good game.

As a casual and not too much of a hardcore SHMUP player, this game is absolutely amazing with its presentation, gameplay and customizability to each players' style.

The end stages' hypeness rivals with Touhou 7 PCB (My fav shmup of all time)'s end stages with the timing of the music and the bullet patterns that the games throw at you.

Absolute P E A K. I can't help but smile and hold my breath due to how epic stage 5 and the final boss were.

Not to mention, you can unlock more content i.e weapons, music, wallpaper, encouraging repeat playthroughs even more. I look forward to the day where I can 1cc this game in Hyper mode because this game is H Y P E.

literally the greatest shoot em up of all time.

I played this game a ton on my old class work pc so I bought it on my gaming pc expecting it to run just as well. But it totally chugs on this pc. And it only opens in big picture mode. I'm not even complaining like those hard core gamers where the game is a fraction of a second off and they claim its unplayable. The slow down is so bad that any lay man would clearly see that its running in super slow motion.

Easily one of the best in the genre. I don't recommend it to people new to the genre as it is a hard one to start with, but anyone that has more than a passing interest in the genre should own this.

Very nice.

Extraordinarily tight and fun STG. Very rewarding to learn 1cc and Score routes. Incredible Soundtrack! Been playing since before the Double Action update which only made the game better.

It's like a Cave shmup, except it's actually well made.

game good. follows the new modern shmup standard of syncing the OST to gameplay so you "play" an album. All around excellent, beginners to vets can enjoy the game with all the settings available. If my 9-year-old nephew can have fun with the game any noob can too.

you owe it to yourself to play this game if you like STG in any fashion it looks, sounds, and PLAYS incredibly well and has tons of fun features

My intro to shmups, I loved it. 1CC at 45 hours.

As a novice in the genre, this seems like a really great videogame

The goat of traditional shmups.
The presentation is absolutely great, with an awesome soundtrack (composers never miss in this genre I swear), very pleasant visuals that, while pixel art, manage to break away from the overused NES-esque color palettes, instead going for a much more colorful and bright palette, and very good art for the main menu and the empty space on the sides. The character designs (not just the poster girls, the others inside the bosses too) are also very nice. I wish there was more lore about them.

This game also fixes a big issue of mine with many games in the genre, which is that scoring is actually important to the game. Resources are tied to scoring, which further incentivises getting better at it. "But some games do the same!!!" yeah until you reach 60m points in the 4th stage and you no longer get anything more from it, making you switch to a much more careful and survival-focused playstyle half-way through.
Blue Revolver's scoring system never stops granting you resources. This, alongside being a very intuitive scoring system, is why this is the only shmup I've played where I've actually cared about scoring as much as getting a 1cc.
Also leaderboards are nice. Adds a competitive element to it.

Also the amount of visual customization is crazy. You can modify pretty much everything. The background is too light and won't let you see bullets clearly? You can tone it down. You don't like the colors of the bullets? You can change them. You think the game could use an old-monitor filter? Somehow there is one (although you have to unlock those).

And just like Touhou, it has pretty malleable difficulty levels, which means that even people who never played anything like this can have a fair shot at getting a 1cc.

If I had to say a negative about the game, it is that it is still yet another flying vehicles game with not that much bullet variety, but it is still pretty creative pattern-wise. Definitely on the upper end of the list in these regards. As I said, the color palette also helps it be more distinguishable from the rest.

Mission and XP mode are also very nice pieces of side content and I wish more shmups included stuff like this. The full 5-6 stages arcade run is fun and all, but man is it nice to have more stuff to do than just grinding that.

Peak game. Candidate for the best in the genre.

Blue Revolver didn't initially leave a very strong impression on me, but there's a lot of scoring depth here. Now I have 100 hours in it spread out over the last 4 years, and I'm still planning to put in several more obsessive week long grinds to up my PB by 5%.

guess I'm into shmups now whoops

Good shooting, good music.

She Blue on my Revolver til I Double Action

Before Blue Revolver, I was terrible at shmup/bullet hell games. After Blue Revolver, I still suck at them, but I don’t feel as bad.

My favorite shmup to this day. I love the speed and pacing of it. The resource and scoring system also pushes you to use your resources which is a good habit to take as a less experienced shmup player that I am. Tons of cool missions, excellent quality of life, 120fps mode, this game has everything.

Very good indie SHMUP!

I like it

10

This is my third Steam shmup after Mushihimesama and Crimzon Clover. And it indeed belongs to the same category as those gems. A labour of love from the devs (thank you Danbo!) and a wonderful experience for the player. It has a real distinct graphics style, an amazing soundtrack, a wide variety of characters and weapons, refined gameplay mechanics (with a balance to be found btw scoring and survival), increasingly challenging modes... Last but not least, it is available across multiple platforms with even a native Mac port :) An absolute must have.

very good very hard (I am bad at the videogame)

i hate shmups i want to go back to playing easy games that make me feel good

As one who is still slowly growing and learning on how to play Bullet Hell games, especially for one like me who plays SHMUP games, mainly coming in from R-Type series, this is that one game that I definitely recommend newcomers of the bullet hell genre, as it offers so much in letting you slowly get used to dodging the huge amounts of bullets, as well as learning on how you are supposed to look at the play areas during your gameplay session.

The common many normal people who may have heard of bullet hell and will recommend Touhou ( certain weebs I know for sure are like this ), though I believe Blue Revolver is the better take in recommending newcomers to enjoy the game.

So what else there is that you enjoy about the game?

my favorite shmup (in my 3 years of playing largely CAVE shmups)

PROS
- tight balance of pushing player to try the hard route while being forgiving for mistakes (at least when playing for survival)
- very nice rank system - rank feels earned and balanced - even as a bad player, I like trying to increase rank because it's just fun
- great music
- satisfying combo / scoring mechanic - even as a novice, I'm thinking about different routes to maximize score
- game encourages you to think about score, since extends are fairly regular - so score helps survival in a very tangible way
- missions are a great breather and sense of progress when feeling burned out on full run attempts (and I'm too lazy sometimes to train level-by-level). unlocks are another nice little progression thing. haven't touched XP Mode but that's another whole game mode to break things up.

CONS
- pretty quick to unlock all unlocks
- switching soundtracks is cool but you have to manually set the track for each scenario - i wish i could just say "when fighting boss, play a random one of original, double action, or remix of the boss music" so I could passively get to know all the versions (the music is good but i don't care enough to swap them out regularly)
- unlockable screen filters are unplayable for me - they mess with readability too much
- I have a hard time seeing some of the bullets - the very nice accessibility tweaks help here, but i like the base game's bullet colors, i don't want to mess with the palette
- anime voices

+Best quality of life features in any shmup.
+Amazing Difficulty balancing and progression.
+Great bullet patterns.
+Great Character gameplay variety.
+Great Music

All around great game and the dev dropped a great update too it.

as soon as I saw the DDP tank bridge 2 seconds into the game I was sold

and then the game continued to be good in basically every way it possibly could be, both in terms of content and features/polish

love to see it

One of the best shooting games on Steam. Lots of great features with the new update and super polished gameplay.

This game is hard as balls
Great soundtrack
Nice accessibility options

music = bop
gameplay = on top
game = not slop

A phenomenal shmup that is well put together and approachable. Quite challenging too; Even the easiest difficulty will prove to be quite the hurdle for a novice player. What surprised me the most going into the game was that, by default, there are no continues. There is free play you can enable but this prevents you from earning a number of achievements and being unable to save your high score after a run. As someone new to shmups this gradually shifted my attitude about the genre. It made me want to press on even if I made mistakes early on and see just how far I could get.

The amount of options is incredibly impressive, especially in the context of the Double Action update. Want to change the colour of the enemy bullets? You can do that. What to customize the wallpapers, even choosing which one you want on the left or right side of the screen? You can do that. Filters for the game? Color palettes for your ship? It's there. A number of accessibility options are also there if needed.

Scoring is great and it's part of what makes the game so fun. For the most part you shoot down 8 enemies and then switch to your special weapon to get a big bonus. Seeing all those point items floating down after dispatching a large mob of enemies is very satisfying. There's also plenty of chances for extra points with the Break bonuses; some of which can be tricky to get but pulling it off is always worth it.

Throughout my failed attempts, what helped keep me going was that amazing soundtrack; seriously one of the my favorites for a shmup. But having just one soundtrack wasn't enough, so instead, you have two options for each song out of the game with plenty of extras you can unlock. Speaking of which, having unlockables is very appreciated. It seems like a small thing but I like having something extra to shoot for beyond the obvious 1CC.

Blue Revolver is a special shmup; made with a lot of care and attention to detail. The Double Action update elevated what was already a great game. If you're new to the genre you might be inclined to go for something like Mushihimesama's novice mode first and that's perfectly fine. But after that? Once you've gotten used to it? Consider this game; because it's not one any shmup fan should be without.

One of my favorite 3 Shmups.

Excellent music.
Top tier bullet patterns.
Vibes for days.

Love this game.

Before this game I dont even play shmups, but this game make me interested in the genre and make me play the classics. None I love as much as Blue Revolver, for me the best for today standarts.

Very challenging, but it never feels unfair. Great OST and artstyle too! Wonderful if you like shmups.

I bought this long ago and loved it then. I've been dreaming of a 120+ FPS Pixel-based Shmup for ages. Something that matches the motion fluidity you get from old arcade SHMUPs on CRT. I can't believe it was added in. It's GLORIOUS. All the other new stuff is great as well.