Разработчик: SpaceMyFriend
Описание
A mass of muscle and teeth lay dormant before you. As you inch your way closer, it comes alive. A sphincter crying for help, beckons you to descend. Your only option is down.
Travel through a fleshly vessel, as an eyeball, collecting rheum [eyeball crusties] to grow stronger in your fight against the infection plaguing this.......body. Collect eye crusties, upgrade your pupils, and clear the screen of bullets with your cornea crushing eye blasts!
FEATURES
- Two difficulty modes
- Unlock-able endless mode
- Endless mode features new upgrades and challenges
- Stack-able power ups
- 6 playable characters to unlock
- Secret hidden boss fights!
- Compete for the highscore with online leaderboards!
- A variety of enemies to combat
- Original soundtrack
- A plethora of bullets and eyeballs!
- Good ol' fashioned cheat codes!
- Full keyboard and controller support
Поддерживаемые языки: english
Системные требования
Windows
- OS: XP
- Processor: 1 GHz or faster
- Memory: 1 GB RAM
- Graphics: 64mb
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 140 MB available space
- OS: Win 10
- Processor: 2 GHz or faster
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- DirectX: Version 9.0
- Storage: 150 MB available space
Отзывы пользователей
Totally amazing game you should buy immediately, actually...
Rheum is yet another of literally hundreds of lazy amateur 2D retro bullet hell shoot 'em ups infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. This one has an oesophagus theme, which is a terrible idea, but then again, so is reskinning a shoot 'em up template from the GameMaker Studio construction kit and pretending to be a game developer. And then inflicting that on Steam gamers after paying $100 to publish garbage through Valve's disastrous Steam Direct program. Yet here we are.
Anyway this is a really badly made shmup. There's a slew of defects on top of the shallow, mediocre gameplay and craptastic "art".
From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.
A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.
There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.
The game only displays in 4:3 pillarboxed aspect ratio. It's possible they developed this using an old CRT they found in a dumpster, or this game has been specifically designed for people gaming on PC's from 1995... either way, this isn't really acceptable in the modern era of PC gaming. However, it gets worse, as the developer assumes your screen resolution is, well, arbitrarily grabbed from the available ones, so the developer decided my system must display the game at 1920x2160 ultra pillarboxed. Why would anyone do that? It's basically just sheer incompetence. But this is something gamers shouldn't have to put up with.
The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts.
While this is on PC, it has all the hallmarks and deficiencies of a console game, from the clunkier than needed control scheme to the less than cutting edge graphics. There's 10's of thousands of PC games on Steam, and PC gamers deserve only the best. This might not appeal to many gamers due to the lack of PC-centric design. It's unclear why this game was never accepted on the video game console appliances it seems to have been designed for.
Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the GameMaker Studio construction kit/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset favoured by amateur developers as it's cheap and requires little in the way of development skill, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities. Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. GameMaker Studio is most commonly used to make retro pixel shovelware and cash grabs.
A strong argument can be made that construction kits like GameMaker Studio should never be used to make games for profit, as the "developer", SpaceMyFriend has done here. These construction kits are intended to teach people some of the basic principles of game development, and to make small demos to pass around with friends. They're not intended to replace to actual work of real, professional game developers. So it's inappropriate when amateurs try to use these for profit, without any actual, real game development effort taking place. This doesn't result in products that have any real meaningful value for gamers.
These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 4 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
Rheum is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. This is also competing with over 9,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
I'd say SpaceMyFriend has done it again but this is an older title (2018) that I've just discovered. I love his visceral themes and just the quirky nature of his games, and all the hidden little extras you can find if you delve deep enough. Bosses are hard as nails! Replayable.
Rheum's a superb top-scrolling shooter which quickly turns into a bullet hell. Super challenging; has secrets if you can survive long enough to find them. Love the visceral theme, great little game.
For more niche curation, follow me at: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27440015-CSH-Picone/
Don't really know why the game has a mixed review score, as it definitely is good enough to get a positivie imo.
Quick Score: 4/5
Notes: The UI is interesting, but also not super practical, I played for 2 hours before realizing there actually was a tutorial in the game. the tutorial should definitely be enabled by default for your first playthrough because i had a million questions and none of them were being answered.
Bosses are fun, the 3 stages are all kind of the same thing though, and because of the power scaling the final stage actually ends up being the easiest aside from the boss.
For 3$ the game is definitely worth it, you will get at least 2-3 hours of enjoyment out of it, maybe a bit more if you go for the achievements. Speaking of which, I would have liked to seen just a handful more interesting achievements. Such as a 1cc hard mode with TLB, or some score goal, etc.
Love it A bit of issues But Fucking Love it
This game makes me vomit in a good nice way
Nice shoot 'em that will turn into a bullet hell during its bossfights. I especially like the upgrade mechanic where taking permanent upgrades makes you weaker for a short time. This way you always have to keep in mind the long term and short term implications of taking an upgrade.
The bullets and patterns are always clearly distinguishable, never had problems with that. Only major complaint I have, is the lacking soundscape as there are very few sound effects in relation to what's going on on the screen, which feels very odd.
If you're looking for a shmup that's a little bit out of the ordinary, give Rheum a go.
Deserves more atention
For those who have played games like Lifeforce or Abadox, or wondered what Chronenberg's body horror would be like in a game, here you go. controls are fluid and easy to use, Although a focus button would be helpful, since it does share several bullet hell aspects. The music is nice, if understated to not be a distraction. The graphics are fitting for the game, and cartoonish enough to not make the experience nausiating.
This game is so much fun I've played a couple hours. I've recommended this game already to my friends. They tried it on my account first then said they might buy it.
Art- Great artstyle. The pixel art is fantastic. The flashy projectiles can be turned down a bit. Got a little headache from staring at the screen for an hour. If you have a medical condition that doesn't allow you to look at bright flashing lights, DO NOT BUY!! It could be harmful to you. If you do not have a medical condition, pick up this game
Gameplay- Really damn fast. The game play is nice paced and the enemies are just coming after you the deeper you progress. The power-up system is really neat. You gain XP and it randomly gives you an upgrade or bomb to use along with a random skill up. The bosses are fun and we'll designed.
User Interface- The UI is really nice. It is nice and fluent and I have not experienced a single bit of lag, even on my crappy laptop. There are little customizations for the way you start the game, tutorial or right into the action. The tutorial just goes over key mechanics and then starts you fluently into the game with the regular stuff you would start with.
Overall- Rheum is a great indie game. T-Rexcellent Games has a bright future if they continue to develop games in the future. Would rate this game 9/10. The only thing that bugs me is the flashy lights. If it was little bits on some common enemies I would be fine. But the first boss is insane with the flashy lights. Other than that go buy this game!!!
While Rheum has character and heart, the core gameplay is a bit too bland for me to tell my friends to run out and buy this. I like the artwork and universe, and some of the bullet patterns are quite remarkable. What I don't like is the mish-mash of enemy patterns that roll in, and the overall game mechanic structure is pretty ho-hum.
Essentially, how it works is after you kill an enemy it drops XP shards that you collect and fill a meter; when the meter is filled you activate it to gain +1 health and a random powerup. Okay, that's cool enough on paper, but the whole thing just feels underwhelming. The powerups all need to feel a bit more meaty; when I get a damage up, I should feel more powerful - and largely I didn't. I do need to mention that there are some nice attention to details such as you pick up more XP if you are not shooting, and when you activate the meter you can aim to fire the powerup icon into a group of enemies for some bonus/free damage.
Unfortunately in the flooded genre of vertical shooters, Rheum gets a downvote from me - it fundamentally needs some more interesting mechanics.
Pros:
+Artwork is quite nice and unique
+I like the indie feel
+Price point is totally fair
+Some really neat bullet patterns
Cons:
-Music is nearly nonexistent with volume all the way up the music was a bit too low
-No digital controller pad support, and the stick is just a bit too coarse for some of the more intricate bullet patterns Fixed!
-The core powering up mechanic just isn't enough to keep me playing
-The whole thing feels so much like the Isaac universe that it's too close for comfort
-The enemy patterns feel random to a fault
-I don't feel compelled to keep playing
Look, it's cheap enough to grab and support an indie dev - but I just don't find myself driven to keep grinding through it.
Rheum is a solid and fun game with a few little issues I'll address below. If you need a summary, though: I like it!
DISCLAIMER:
Obviously what you're getting are my first impressions. There's more content (like extra playable characters) that I haven't yet gotten to, but these are the things that stand out to me within minutes of beginning the game!
SETTING:
You know what you're getting if you've seen the trailer! Biological horror shootemups like this are an under-represented genre that I'm always glad to see more of.
GAMEPLAY:
The game may feel a little difficult at first until you get the hang of manually powering yourself up upon absorbing enough Rheum (from defeating enemies). Once you start doing this consistently it's really empowering!
Pressing the Power Up button will give you another notch of health and make a powerup icon appear at the bottom of the screen. Collecting the icon will give you a variety of bonuses with the particularly useful effect of cancelling nearby enemy shots, as well as damaging or destroying nearby enemies. Having it appear at the bottom rather than instantly cancelling enemy shots forces the player to think ahead and can't be simply used as a "panic button". That's what Bombs are for, after all :^)
Speaking of bombs, they have a similar shot-and-enemy cancelling effect, and (when playing on Easy difficulty) will fire off automatically when the player takees damage with no more hit points to spare. Obviously, the best time to use these is before you get hit, to cancel a swarm of enemy shots on your own terms and get big damage on a crowd or boss. I tend to save them for the boss because I'm terrible at Bullet Hell games and have to end the fight as soon as I can.
With only three levels (at least available on the main menu--I may be wrong) this is a short one meant to be replayed for points and performance. There are a number of stats being tracked that you see upon dying (such as amount of "point blank kills" and "time spent near bullets" that I immediately took to and started challenging myself with on my second try. Little challenges like this are surprisingly fun if you ask me! The bullet grazing mechanic is very strict too, so you'll find yourself threading the needle between swarms of enemy shots staying as close as possible as long as you can...while still trying to clear the screen of enemies. I like it--compare to Psyvariar, if you're familiar with that game.
I'm not a big player of Bullet Hell games; from what I've played, though, I find the gameplay to be fun and approachable with beautifully designed (and easy to see) bullets that weave and flow across the screen creating a maze for the player to navigate.
SOUND:
The music is, in a word, "sedate". Nothing wrong with that, especially given the tone and setting of the game. It has a kind of low key somber, gloomy feeling that kind of puts the player in a meditative state of mind while playing rather than making them sweat like your Dodonpachi or Touhou games.
I do have a couple of issues with the sound effects; see below.
CRITIQUES:
Like mentioned above I think the game has a solid foundation and fun gameplay, which is obviously the most important part. However, I feel Rheum isn't quite living up to the potential promised by its cool setting and fun gameplay mechanics...yet. there are a couple presentation aspects I think could be improved upon that would boost player enjoyment immensely.
-Consider adding a "rotate monitor" mode that would omit the sidebars and increase the viewing area for players who prefer to do their vertical shootemups that way.
-Sound effects feel weak and not empowering, even with their volume turned up in the sound mix. I appreciate that you're aiming for a more biological atmosphere than a space shooter, but I think punching them up (whether as simply as boosting the bass or adding a more bombastic, "standard explosion" effect to enemy deaths) would be a HUGE improvement to the overall feel of the entire game. Having little to no audio feedback that your shots are making contact with enemies is a bummer as well. Satisfying shooting is made in the sound booth!
-The standard enemy sprites are very similar in color to the background oftentimes, and this has tripped me up a lot. The glowing eyes do help to set them apart, but when combined with the also glowing bullets flying around I feel it isn't enough to make them instantly recognizable.
-Also about graphics...this might sound meaner and more subject to opinion than my other critiques, but for a pixel-art game some of the graphics are a bit carelessly drawn and not as effective as they could be. There's not a lot I could say except "tighten up" the looks of some enemies and particularly the player's sprite. The Grotesque and Biological look is totally achievable while having a solid composition and feel! Check out R-Type and especially Bio Hazard Battle to see what I'm getting at.
CONCLUSION:
I have a few nitpicks presentation-wise, but Rheum is good and plays well! The powerup gimmick is great and adds a lot to the game and I'm always a sucker for games where you fly inside a creature and get treated as an intruder. Plus come on, it's 3 bucks. Support the developer and help them improve their craft.
Дополнительная информация
| Разработчик | SpaceMyFriend |
| Платформы | Windows |
| Ограничение возраста | Нет |
| Дата релиза | 13.12.2024 |
| Отзывы пользователей | 85% положительных (13) |