Assault Android Cactus

This game is a masterpiece. If you like twin-stick shooters or top-down bullet hells, easily worth a buy. If you're sceptical, let me convince you.
Starting off visually, this game's got strong designs in its characters. The many, many mechanical foes fit in well with the varied environments, and they provide a great background for the Androids to stand out against, with their eye-catching hair (you see them top-down, so this is very much a plus) and their different personalities. The bosses are also sights to behold, with looks that match their zone and extremely recognisable silhouettes. An art gallery is included with nice renders, concept art and pieces from the team, or from guests.
Moving into the Androids themselves, each one's a treat to look at, listen to and are tons of fun to tinker with. Their kits are built for different play-styles and some stages favour specific picks, but the arcade nature of the game allows anyone to work anywhere if the player's good enough.
That brings us to the meat of it: game-play. This game has such solid fundamentals that everything just clicks. You've got a health system that allows risk and reward, gun upgrades that reward constant aggression and punish passiveness, with a unique "battery" system that has you racing against your own clock to beat the level, topping up on coveted pickups to keep you in the fight. Getting knocked down isn't the end of the world, and you can always make a comeback. Power-ups also come in three flavours, allowing you to temporarily boost speed/pickup range and firepower or give yourself a breather with invulnerability.
Stage design is also worth a shout here, as it is wonderfully crafted. From as early as 1-1, elements of the stage will constantly come into play and spice things up, so that the glorious systems in place never get dull. Constant shifting of the playing field, gimmicks that annoy you until you figure out how to use them yourself, the level design and the game in general always feels fair and the best players will turn the game against itself.
Hell, I still discover new things to this day. I never realised that the Firepower power-up could block bullets until today!
But, for a moment, I want to talk about my journey with AAC.
I got this with the Games with Gold service on my X-Box one, and I think I spent an easy 200-300 hours, probably more on it. Every year, I returned to it to give an achievement another shot, or just wanted to see if my muscle memory was still there and have fun. This game has always been there for me, a constant comfort that I can come back to and enjoy no matter what.
However, after selling my X-Box One, I decided to buy it for real this time.
In it, I discovered the "Assault Android Cactus+" update.
Only making its way to PC and Switch, I finally get to experience the glory of Campaign+. And holy Hell, it's like playing it again for the first time. Magical. Enemies get replaced, rearranged in all sorts of fun ways that still gave me trouble on my S+ attempts.
And they even give you the gift of harder bosses with a bonus bit of lore I've yet to discover. (I assume the fourth cut-scene comes from Campaign+? Only one way to find out.)
Without even going into the glory of co-op, between the rock-hard foundation of the gameplay, the striking and vibrant art direction. the serendipitous sound design, the Campaign/Campaign+, Daily and Infinite modes, as well as many other smaller touches I won't mention to keep this somewhat short, I can without a doubt recommend this with 110% confidence. A gem that in my opinion should've got more attention than it did, this is a drug of a game that will always keep me coming back, and I thank Witch Beam for pouring the potentially robotic hearts and souls of their team into this.
11/10.
Go play it already!
(P.S. Kissable Androids when?)

3500 hours and counting. AAC is the ideal twin stick shooter with infinite replayability and infinite room for mastery, elegantly simple ai with endlessly diverse ways to combine the enemies abilities. each of the playable droids have unique strengths and weaknesses which form their own playstyles unto themselves (except Lemon and Liq who suck ass). I do recommend a few changes though
Smooth out the walls so enemies, particularly wasps and factories, don't get trapped
Remove the minimum fire time for Cactus’ flamethrower
Give Holly's primary 10-20% more damage and decrease the difference in damage between low levels and high levels
Make Lemons higher weapon levels as thin as the minimum weapon level and make the rockets travel through wasps without exploding
Coral is perfect, leave as is or I quit. Shield boing could be reduced or removed tho but Coral is already op enough
Starch is op, leave as is. A laser color gradient to show current dps would be nice tho
Make Auber function the same on controller as on mouse and keyboard, it is physically painful to play for more than 5 minutes making it impossible for a controller player to use her with any regularity. Also make Auber’s first person camera from Helo’s perspective (sorry not sorry)
Give Shiitake’s primary a weak pistol to take out small spread out enemies, at higher weapon levels make it roughly as strong as Cactus’ minimum level primary or slightly weaker
Remove the minimum travel time for Peanuts drill and don't force an unswap after a wallbang
Make Liqs primary continue travel until the full damage is expended, change twin fire to a single stream. give her 2ndary about 30-50% more I-frames and allow it to target in any direction not just a narrow field of view directly where Liq is facing

A gem of the genre with some fun quirky humor. Works perfectly on linux as it does on windows.
The music's really cool, the levels are fairly numerous and varied, and the same can be said for the enemies, characters and weapons. It's got good gameplay and game mechanics, and of course it also appears to be rock solid and bug free, haven't had a single issue.
Visually nice, and somehow manages to also stay visually manageable even when there's a ton of action, which is something a lot of games can't get right. You know where you are and where to go and what to get at all times.
And the way it plays is pretty engaging, you have to stay active to stay alive and recharge your battery, which gives it a good kind of tension. It offers a fair challenge, too.
After I started playing, I couldn't stop, had to finish the whole thing. Then I went to unlock new weapons and play the infinity drive mode, which I still pick up to play from time to time years after finishing the game.
Really love this, it's both fun and pretty, and a very replayable thing to come back to.

Devs, if you ever see this, I need to know if there will ever be a sequel. This game is one of my all time favorites. I beat it over and over on xbox. Now, I'm stuck trying to S+ all of the levels on PC. Aubergine is nuts btw, I love her.
The combat is amazing, the gameplay is fun, and there is so much in the game that can be built off of to be put into a sequel. I'm always finding myself turning back to this game.

My favorite twin-stick shooter ever since I found it. I like in particular the different playstyles afforded by the different androids. Also, the humor, what little there is of it, is top notch.

twitchy & refined level based twin stick shooter with lots of ranks and scores to chase and different characters to play! the mechanics are mostly pretty tight and all that together makes it fun for hours after beating the campaign :D

Honestly just a solid goodass twin stick shooter that becomes even more of a steal on sale.