Recent reviews by blame

Fantastic. A love letter to survival horror. Mainly repping the Resident Evil style. All sorts of neat little references, almost everything is very well thought out, and it's filled to the brim with love and attention to detail. I haven't quite beaten it yet (will update when I do), but the game feels like a developer's dream "nightmare" of a horror game this way. This is the first game I've felt some passion for in months. Literal months, guys.

The shooting, resource management and movement make the game tense as all hell, the labyrinthine levels are a joy to explore and are chock full of surprises... This game is just a quality survival horror experience.

It is TO DIE for if you are an RE fan.

Best 4$ I ever spent.

UPDATE: I beat it and it's sick, content of review still stands

bull's faecal matter really do be blazing tho

edit: lobby's are borked but quick match works well enough for me so eh

A work of art. Pretty surreal. As an individual experience, it's worth it just for how great the presentation and atmosphere is. Beyond that though, there's also some meat to its bones (the meat being two separate endings, the individual choices you make and the potential meaning behind it all) that warrant a little extra thinking and exploration.

Highly recommended.

Well, that is unless you don't like weird, surrealist stuff or artsy games, I guess? I don't know. I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss it for those that typically dislike such things (especially walking sims), as it's just ~15 minutes for a single playthrough. And it only costs a dollar!

Gunplay is super satisfying, the classes and items are interesting, bla bla bla point is, it's super fun. Highly recommended. Probably the best roguelite I've ever played.

Fun game! The presentation is quite well done, featuring stellar pixel art and music. The gameplay is also fairly novel, sitting somewhere between a gallery shooter and a breakout clone. Story and dialogue weren't my cup of tea at all, but you can skip that stuff if you feel like it so no prob there, really. I did enjoy the ending! Very sweet :)

This game can be frustrating, so here are some (spoiler text) hints to make your time more enjoyable:


- Getting good at hitting the ball at the right angle is crucial for getting the ball behind enemies, bricks, and obstacles, so pay special mind to that.

- In boss fights and to some extent regular stages, it can be a better strategy to focus on the regular enemies on the battlefield rather than the boss itself or the bricks themselves. This is because enemies drop power-ups which can do some nice damage and give you momentum in the fight. (Your power-ups will kill more enemies, which in turn will give you more power-ups. It also helps that they help to clear out bricks.) When there aren't any bricks or other enemies, for example, lightning can do a lot of damage to a boss. The dark flame one, as well, is essentially just free damage on the boss if you aim it right.

Hope that helps! Enjoy!

This game is wonderful, great world and characters, charming, silly, 10/10 bla bla bla but please for the love of god don't play it on PC. I must have had upwards of 20 crashes trying to play through this; couldn't get through the chapter 9 crashes no matter what i tried.

Best way to play this is the original 360 version (which you can play on XBOX One and Series). Most stable, best framerate (stable 30 iirc), best colours; it doesn't have the few extra bells and whistles and cutscenes of this version but those things don't really matter. I've been playing through the PS3 version of the Director's Cut and while the framerate is complete donkey ♥♥♥♥, as is the driving, I haven't experienced a single crash. Can't speak for the Switch version but it'd be impressive if it was any worse than this port.

Makes me truly sad to say this, but unless you're willing to risk being unable to progress and struggling with crash after crash, do not buy :(

EDIT: I still STRONGLY recommend this game run-n-gun and Contra fans, it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ amazing love letter to the Contra and Metal Slug games that I positively adore. Fantastic music that recalls the adrenalin-feuled FM-powered rock and synthwave of the arcade and the genesis with memorable melodies and badass vibe. Exhilirating level, enemy and boss design that is as interesting to engage with as it is surprising. A genuine, action film romp. However I do have some gripes about it having played it as much as I have. For one, dodge rolling would be better if it had a dedicated button. This isn't the end of the world--contrary to what some other reviews would complain about, it IS physically possible to stop aiming down, jump, then aim down again (shocking, I know)--but it would make the game that smidge more intuitive to have dodging as its own button. There is some satisfaction in pulling off the jump-then-aim-down thing, but I think the experience of accidentally dying from an unintended roll is more frustrating than that is satisfying, creating this weird, slight negative in the experience. Note that I know Contra: Hard Corps has this exact same issue and I LOVE that game. The difference is, the Genesis controller had 3 face buttons and no shoulder buttons. Modern controllers have at least 4 face buttons and 4 shoulder buttons. This leaves at least 3 buttons open for use in Blazing Chrome's current control scheme.

Continuing down that line of thought, a dedicated melee button would be nice. This has some more difficult design issues though, since being able to spam melee on a whim is most likely overpowered alongside a ranged toolset (SHMOILER: hell, that's the other two characters' main design gimmick: melee-on-demand ). This has some potential fixes, including A) still requiring enemies to be in range, and B) having a general cooldown on a whiffed melee that serves as punishment for missing. This second issue of melee I bring up is less concrete, I should say. There is something inherently satisfying about timing a melee attack with the shoot button that I cannot deny, but it's frustrating when I WANT to shoot but throw out a melee instead. Or vice versa. More control is what I'm advocating for, but I think either design decision is valid at the end of the day.

The best solution to all of this is the following: have different control options that allow for these kinds or input. Checkbox for dedicated melee and checkbox for dedicated roll in the settings menu. I'm sure all of this is a pain to implement though, and I'm just grateful this game exists. Seriously.

Thank you, Joymasher and Allone Works, for providing such a phenomenal arcade action experience <3.

Also, to the two people reading this edit: CHECK OUT MOONRIDER!!! It's Joymasher's next game and it looks SO ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ impossibly sick that I can't wait to play it. It looks like Shinobi 3 + Mega Man X and that ♥♥♥♥ has me positively beaming with excitement. Geocrusher theme from Moonrider, by Dominic Ninmark, I've listened to a hundred times and it JUST SLAPS. Just go look it up dude pls

Original review:

This game is pretty much on par with the genre staples.

That's very high praise coming from me.

Finely tuned gameplay, strong visuals and music, and memorable set pieces / bosses. I'll be replaying this one multiple times.

If you like run 'n gunners, or just challenging arcade titles in general, buy this.

If you want the best of the best when it comes to pixel graphics and animation, look no further. The workflow is blazingly fast once you get up to speed with how the program works (I can't count the amount of minutes--nay--hours the anti-aliasing tool in particular has saved, it's friggin' MAGICAL)... and with the detailed, easy-to-follow tutorial videos made by the developer, it won't take long for you to get to that point. The rest is easy to figure out by reading the included help file, toying around with the tools given to you, and the Keyboard Shortcuts... option in the File menu (which allows you to look through the various shortcuts for different functionality as well as assign your own shortcuts).

The palette tools (colour cycling! quick generation of RGB/HSV colour ramps! stencils! etc. etc.) are unmistakably the most powerful I've seen in any pixel art program ever, period. The brush modes and operations are incredibly useful, as are the multiple grids, tilemapping tools... I could gush for ages about every single aspect of this program.

Thanks for making such a wonderful product at such a wonderful price point, it has helped to speed up my work in game development significantly, as well as make it more enjoyable overall.

If you're serious about pixel art, I would definitely recommend getting this software.

Also... I really think a lot of people are just impatient with the software. Give it some time, you will be rewarded.

I played the demo of this years back when I was thirteen. I believe I ran through it about thirty or so times, manic about racking up combos, going fast as ♥♥♥♥, and getting that beautiful S ranking.

Years later, with those oh so sweet memories still in my mind, I decided to finally buy it.

Boy am I glad that I finally did.

Bonkers action, reminds me a lot of Gunstar Heroes.

WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR BUY IT

it's pretty nice