Jamestown

A solid shoot 'em up with great replayability. The harder difficulties really challenge you and the ships offer something for different play styles. Truly a gem of the genre.

got this game back in 2011, decided to play it on my Deck and just crashes to desktop. Apparently the issue has been around for a while now and the devs have a plus version out and did not bother to fix this vesion.

splendid

Absolutely great shooter.

Really good game. I've never played a bullet hell game before but I think this one is really good.

Your ship can move in 8 directions and has a regular and special attack. You pick up gold from defeated enemies and when you get enough (very small amount) you can enter Vaunt mode.

About 5 seconds after you enter vaunt mode, you are temporarily invincible and while in it your damage and points are doubled. You can sustain Vaunt mode by collecting gold to prevent your meter from depleting. You can also trigger another invincible period by exiting Vaunt mode early but you won't be able to enter it again for a while (not too long). Vaunt mode is a great feature for this game. You can choose to enter it during a difficult portion of the level enter it as early as possible to get a high score.

The review says that I spend less than 3 hours on the game. It is a short game, however the levels are challenging really fun to play through (minus the last one). In order to unlock the last level of the game, you must beat all of the previous levels on Legendary. That may be a turn off for some but again the levels are short and its fun to see your leaderboard rank go up with each playthrough. I've only played with the first ship on solo but there are 3 other ships (7 if you have the DLC), challenge mode, and guantlet mode, giving players more content for their money.

Fun shooter. Great music, controls, and graphics. Everything you could want in a shooter.

The fact it is based on historical events makes it even better.

Jamestown


Pros-

#1.You get to shoot/kill tons of things

#2.Local Co-Op



Cons-

#1.I could not figure out how to have the keyboard control the movements and let the mouse do the shooting.

Can you only use one or the other?Leave me a comment please if you know how to fix.

This alone ruins it for me.


#2.The graphics look old



The Bottom Line -


If you want to play a game where you ONLY need a mouse or keyboard and you do not need the other this game is for you.

It seems like an ok game too so too bad but I would rather play another shoot em up type game like this instead.

I am giving this game a negative review due to the controls alone but if someone can tell me how to fix it I will give the game a positive review.

i paid for this game and i haven't gotten it to load in years. took a break from steam after that cause it means that digital downloads aren't safe or yours even though you paid money for this stuff. every time i go to start the game is goes through the usual steps then it crashes and doesn't start. i cant find any info at all on how to make the game i paid for work.....

An excellent and incredible Shoot'em up.

The difficulty becomes quites insane alone amd even more crazy when you do it at four players.

This game is a challenge and is extremely satisfying to complete.

The amount of death i had in this game is insane.

Jamestown is a really solid bullet hell vertical shooter that has great style, an interesting and unnecessary story, with some excellent bullet dodging and 4-player couch multiplayer mayhem.

This is a damn fine game. There's a real hodge podge of styles and inspiration: its sort of a John Carter tale set two hundred years earlier but still dripping with 19th century steampunk vibes. The historical setting of Jamestown, Roanoke, and other early American colonies is literally blasted off the planet and relocated to something barely recognizable as American history except for the names and hats. But its still somehow compelling even though the plot matters exactly zero, because the game itself is not some role-playing action adventure but a top-down shoot-em-up. And its a really good top-down shoot-em-up. That plays buttery smooth and manages to have a lot going on visually but still makes enough intuitive sense for your instincts to guide you through it. Getting good at this feels awesome, and the hard-won victories feel even better.

First off, if you are interested in this game, I recommend getting Jamestown+ instead. It has two more stages and more ships.

Jamestown is a shmup with its stages primarily designed around co-op gameplay. However, enemy HP does scale so that enemies don't become sponges if played solo. More about solo gameplay on higher difficulties later.

Jamestown doesn't provide you with a bomb mechanic. Instead it has a hyper-like mechanic called vaunt. It will greatly increase dealt damage and create a shield which absorbs bullets upon activation. The duration of the vaunt can be increased by collecting the golden items. If it runs out, you'll gain a significant amount of score, especially after a long vaunt. Cancelling the vaunt manually will provide you with brief invincibility and only provide you with a fraction of the score you'd get otherwise.

The only reason I purchased this game instead of Jamestown+ is its notoriously hard achievements, which have been unlocked illegitmately by many people and do not exist in Jamestown+. My goal was to see how many of these could be unlocked legitimately. The rest of my review will mostly address my experience regarding just that.

Now, if you purchase only the Jamestown base game, you will have no more than 4 ships available. The problem with this collection of ships is that they're not very good at taking on higher difficulties in solo. Of the four base ships, only the "Gunner" ship is widely considered somewhat viable as it allows you to shoot in any direction. The big problem with them is their very low movement speed on a wide play area. On higher difficulties where you need to take out enemies before the screen gets filled with an unreasonable amount of bullets, most of the time you simply won't stand a chance with the base ships. Not to mention that the low movement speed just doesn't feel good, especially with the game being wide.

There's DLC which contains 3 more ships with the "Treason" ship being another ship that's considered very good. It's also quite fast. Those ships and 3 more are also contained in Jamestown+ without requiring DLC. Basically, if you do not purchase that DLC your experience with the two highest difficulties will simply not be great.

The Divine difficult (second highest) is a mostly well designed difficulty. For the most part, it can be completed reasonably well with the base ships the game provides as most patterns are designed to be dodgable even if enemies can not be taken out most efficiently. If you have solid routes, only the stage 2 boss will be a great obstacle as its movement and used patterns are unpredictably random. It can be easily beaten with the "Beam" ship without much trouble as its laser does a lot of damage at point blank range. However, that ship will struggle heavily on the rest of stage 2 as it is too slow to deal with the enemies on screen and dodge huge junks of bullets being fired your way.

Next, let's discuss the Judgement difficulty. It's the highest difficulty in the game and has been somewhat nerfed in Jamestown+. It adds a unique gimmick which is green ring projectiles. Those can not be cancelled by your vaunt upon activation. You are only immune to them after dying or manually cancelling your vaunt again. I consider it a very fun and challenging difficulty with the "Treason" ship.
However, the Judgement difficulty has a section that is so far deemed impossible to survive, the stage 4 boss's final phase. All it provides is pain and suffering and I just have to assume that it's not been tested at all. Adding an achievement for not dying at all in gauntlet mode which lets you play all 5 stages in a row further implies that not much thought was put into its design.

Tl;dr: there are only two reasons I can think of why you would want to purchase Jamestown, rather than Jamestown+: Challenging these difficult achievements and challenging a harder variation of the Judgement difficulty. But if you're eager to keep at it, you may enjoy it very much!

One of my favorite SHMUPS of the last 10 years, I wish they would make another one because this game is amazing in every way. It's challenging but fair, has plenty of unique and gorgeous enemies, and the controls feel great. Buy on a sale though because it's old and quite short.

A very fun and very good shmup. The graphics are fantastic, excellent vibrant pixel art crawling with details and wonderful animations. It looks fantastic in motion. The controls are very smooth, the vault and special buttons are very well implemented and the different types of ships each make for a slightly different twist on the game. I like the Gunner myself and the ability to steer bullets ala options in Gradius 5. The game is highly replayable thanks to multiple difficulty levels and the levels themselves are rather short. Each level can be played through in under 5 minutes. True there are only 5 levels in the core game, but I keep revisiting them time and time again. The addition of multiplayer and score rankings only adds to the fun. Besides the 5 main levels there are challenge levels and lots of unlockables to unlock. Gameplay wise this is one of the finest shooters I've played - and I'm an avid shmup fan. For the money and the value, you really can't go wrong here.

Jamestown is well known to many Americans as the first colonial settlement in North America in 1619. This game is also set in the year 1619, but it is not in the New World. It is set in Mars. You are a British colonial on the run from the king and country and you try to uncover the secrets of the colony of Roanoke. However, the opposing forces you must face are the Spanish/Martians. This is a top-down shooter that would remind shooters fans of top-down shooters from the 1980s.

It feels like the plot takes a backseat to the solid gameplay. The game introduces you to the beam ship, a standard ship with a primary mode and a secondary mode that requires you to use the left mouse and right mouse, respectively. Other ships are locked until you complete some campaign missions, but you will still have to use the left and right mouse buttons. The controls are that simple, but the game will always test your skills to the max. The beam ship’s primary mode is the 2 lines of bullets and the secondary mode is the powerful beam that can destroy lesser enemies with ease and is very useful against larger enemies. Other ships that are unlocked have their own primary and secondary modes and are good for testing in the campaign missions and challenge stages. The DLCs have more ships that can be unlocked and are definitely worth trying out while testing your skills.

All ships unlocked in the game have one thing in common: a vaunt meter. You must fill up this vaunt meter by collecting the golden nuts and bolts that defeated enemies drop. Once you activate that vaunt by using your default middle mouse button, there is a circular shield that appears around your ship. At first glance, the vaunt looks like it is useful for defensive strategies and is a life saver. I later realized that the vaunt begins a point multiplier that builds up as you defeat enemies while the vaunt is active. You can defeat many enemies in a very short time, but the vaunt also lasts for a short time. The vaunt is best activated when you are in a tight situation, such as when many enemies are firing so many bullets it would be hard to get through them without being blown up.

James town challenges your shooting and movement skills enough that you would have to visit your shoppe to buy some items with the currency you have earned during the campaign missions. The currency comes from collecting the golden nuts and bolts from the defeated enemies. You can buy new ships and challenge packs with your hard earned currency. The challenge stages are break from the campaign missions, but they truly put your skills to the test and train you for other challenge stages and campaign missions.

The challenge stages require you to reach specific goals such as scoring X number of points in X number of seconds. In one challenge stage you must destroy train cars to score an extraordinary number of points to complete the stage. The trick is to destroy train cars, but destroying the engine car last is the key to scoring so many points. I think this is a smart learning curve put together by the indie developers of this game. The difficulties are not unfair because the game is not over that quickly. Jamestown gives you a few credits from the beginning of the mission or challenge stage and those credits can be enough to win at the end.

An interesting take on the learning curve of Jamestown is how you unlock future campaign missions. In order to unlock future campaign mission you have to complete each of the other previous missions on the next highest difficulty level. Every campaign mission begins with ordinary enemies and some larger enemies. When you reach the last stage there is a boss to defeat. It is important to lose as few lives as possible in order to defeat the boss since it is easy to lose multiple credits. There are lots of close calls throughout the game and your ship explodes when it is hit in its dead center. The vaunt becomes critical in these close calls, but you have to be sure that the vaunt is available when the situation is right.

Jamestown has local co-op of up to four players. It is surprising to me that there is no multiplayer since the game would have made for some interesting competition. There are leaderboards to show you how you stack up against other players from around the world.

The graphics are pixelated, but the pixelation is very impressive and detailed. All the explosions and action look very nice and you clearly see the well detailed stripes on the uniforms of the enemies who represent the Spanish/Martian forces.

Essentially, the graphics provide enough style and the gameplay of Jamestown provides enough substance to warrant buying this game at an affordable price of $9.99. The opportunities to unlock ships, campaign missions, and challenge stages will motivate you to continue playing so that you can hone your skills enough.

My Score: 8/10

It is 90s' vertical arcade shooter with enhanced features and presentation!

Good:
- Beautiful 2D pixel drawings, very rare to see in nowadays, about the top notch graphic level of previous NeoGeo games
- Marvelous Soundtrack, match the story background neatly
- Great control response and very accurate hit box detection
- Pretty enemy designs
- Various modes and challenge adds replayablility
- Wide screen vertical shooters is eyes friendly
- Local Coop up to 4 players, I don't complaint the lack of Online mode as I can see it won't goes well with current Internet environment for such tense response game

Bad:
- Scenario stages is quite short, I don't mind to buy DLC to extend the joy

Suggestion:
- Vault Bulletshield is same for all Ships. If every Ships can varie with such as Slow-mo, Bullet reflection, Bullet Breakshot, Bullet Blackhole or etc.

Score: 85/100

Let me start off by saying that i've not played any "bullet hell" games before.

Jamestown was my introduction to the genre, and what a great introduction it was.

Although i've yet to plow through it with a buddy on Judgement difficulty, it's great fun to play with and without a partner.

The aim is to survive every level by dodging all of the projectiles that the enemy fires towards you and to simply survive 'til the end, where there'll be a boss awaiting for you to defeat.

There's a good variety of ships to use that all have different tactics and methods of progressing the stages and they're all entertaining to use.

The DLC is well worth it, too. So don't hesitate to pick it up - it'll give you some brand new ships to add to your arsenal. A great game, well worth your time.

All in all, i'm giving it an 8/10.

Jamestown is a bullet hell shooter, so that pretty much guaranteed that I would like it. It’s got a very unique setting; it’s set in the 16th century, on Mars! The main character is fleeing from the King of England, and is fighting against the Spanish fleet and a bunch of aliens, with steampunk jetpacks things. That’s kind of cool.

Gameplay-wise the most notable thing is that it’s a widescreen, but scrolls vertically. I’m not used to that, as it means a lot of bullets come from the sides, as opposed to games like Touhou and Dodonpachi, but it's nice that the majority of the screen isn't wasted. There’s also a pretty big variety of ships, with very different play styles. But I still stick to the Dodonpachi-style ship, cause that’s what I’m good with.

The pixel art is nice, the music is fitting, and the game difficulty is quite reasonable.

This is one of the best SHMUPS that ive ever played. It has a great multiplayer and lots of challenge. A good time if you have a few friends over and a few controllers to get on it all together, lots of fun i highly recomend it to any SHMUP fan or anyone looking to get into the genre.

Really enjoyable bullethell shooter, Jamestown is a good choice for some couch co-op fun. The controls work about equally well with mouse, keyboard or a gamepad and there are several difficulty levels, although like most bullethell games it leans towards being hard. The graphics are well made with detailed backgrounds, the soundtrack is excellent and there are several mini challenges as well as a funny dialogue option which give variety to the core game. Its weaknesses would be its small level variety as well as the lack of online co-op. I do recommend nevertheless, especially for local co-op purposes, where you will get the most out of it.

This is a nice shootem' up. Have a nice pixelart, good sound, chaotics situtations and diferent types of dificult and ships for diferent types of gamers.

Probably in my overall top 5 games of all time. This game is very easy to get into but extremly hard to master.

Alot of fun playing local coop as well.

I can Thoroughly Recommend This lil Shmup. It has beautifully drawn artwork, a great soundtrack and good level design. It was good to feel an old school sense of satisfaction from actually completing something difficult, but difficult for the right reasons. This is purely a skill based game. It can be done. But can you do it?