I'm not normally really into shoot-em-ups but the gentle difficulty curve, bite-sized pieces of content, and variety of unlocks to pursue all do way more to motivate me to play than the genre's usual reliance of score attacks and punishing difficulty. The story doubly subverts the recent indie gaming trend of making game narratives that replace violent conflict with nonviolent ones, you're still a small ship shooting monsters but instead of bullets you're literally shooting pieces of love at them to overcome their fear and self-loathing and it goes all-in on this in a way that its contemporaries come up short. Definite recommend for anyone who wishes they were more into shmups or is interested in outside art from one-person teams.

I'm not normally really into shoot-em-ups but the gentle difficulty curve, bite-sized pieces of content, and variety of unlocks to pursue all do way more to motivate me to play than the genre's usual reliance of score attacks and punishing difficulty. The story doubly subverts the recent indie gaming trend of making game narratives that replace violent conflict with nonviolent ones, you're still a small ship shooting monsters but instead of bullets you're literally shooting pieces of love at them to overcome their fear and self-loathing and it goes all-in on this in a way that its contemporaries come up short. Definite recommend for anyone who wishes they were more into shmups or is interested in outside art from one-person teams.