Astral Gunners

Astral Gunners is a fantastically designed shmup that bleeds with style from its wild and colorful character designs, blossoming bullet patterns of vibrant colors to a blood-pumping metal soundtrack that pushes you through a selection of stages. The western cartoon style shouldn't throw you off-guard here; Astral Gunners is an authentic hori shmup.
Lots of unlockables including new characters with sweet new abilities as well as earnable extra credits to extend your playthroughs keep you playing after each death, as well as a high score system you can continuously push yourself with.
Aside from their stylish comic appearance characters are diverse in their abilities. Each one has a slightly different firing pattern, and very unique special abilities that change the entire dynamic of how each character plays and defends. In multiplayer the synergies of these character specials work together incredibly well, and obviously have had more than a bit of thought put into them.
Despite the non-conforming shoot 'em up presentation here everything about Astral Gunners is authentic in its arcade roots. Bullet patterns are challenging and unpredictable and score chasing is tightly designed, precise and addictive.
It may not be what shmup people are used to visually when it comes to an arcade shoot 'em ups presentation and that just makes it more unique and interesting, but everything else here is pure, palm-sweating, score-chasing action through a plethora of well-designed and interesting stages and a heavy as hell soundtrack that keeps you focused and engaged and feeling like you're back in the noisy and stuffy arcades of the 90's.
Highly recommended for fans of shmups, score chasing, or new takes on badass arcade action. This is one I'll be coming back to beat my past scores on regularly.
For more unique, abstract, arcadey and retro indie game recommendations check out Cue Indie Review, the indie game Cue-rator

This is a shmup, so let's get to what matters:

-game is VERY fun to play, and the level/route choices, different characters, and the way they impact scoring means it's very fun to replay as well
-the training/practice options are basically as robust as possible, and from what i've seen, it seems like you can practice basically any segment of any level/boss you want to, immediately and with no bullshit/waiting. it's going to make going for really high scoring runs much more comfortable
-music is fantastic. if you're a fan of tony macalpine or joe satriani (or akai katana's ost), you are gonna be in heaven
-it would take me too long to get into the particulars of all the mechanics/how scoring works, (also i'm still unpacking it myself), but suffice to say that there's something here for everyone. there's even mini-caravan sections in the levels based on how quickly you clear waves, with evasive enemies that increase in value if you kill them consecutively without them escaping. you can select the order of levels, and there are optional/bonus "challenge levels" you could choose to include in your route, and "tasks" in each of the main levels that if completed successfully summon an ally on the subsequent level you choose (different allies do different things so there's some strategy involved on choosing the order of levels). just lots of stuff going on, some of it essentially unique to the shmup genre as far as i know

i could keep going but instead i'll just end with this: if you are a fan of shmups, you'll likely enjoy this game a lot. buy it!

I really enjoyed this game - so much so I nearly missed a flight to go on holiday trying to get the easy 1cc. It's scoring system is that compelling!
The gameplay is tight, engaging, and fun - exactly what I want in a shmup. The scoring doesn't seem overly complicated, but I have barely scratched the surface of that as it is quite deep.
The graphical style and presentation is good and works well with the gameplay, story and music - it's the cohesiveness of the parts that adds the cherry on top in my opinion. Nothing sticks out of place, everything seems perfectly arranged and thought through. This makes it a joy to play and I can't wait to spend more time with this game!

At first, I wasn't sure I was going to like Astral Gunners, the art style being something I usually don't seek and sometimes even end up avoiding. But after playing over an hour with a friend — I'm surprised. The stages and boss fights are fun, each characters' playstyle is enjoyably unique and the soundtrack is amazing. Extra kudos for its shot pattern creativity and complex training mode that allows you to set specific sections for you to train.

I cant believe how much content and mechanics is packed into this absolute BANGER SHMUP. you OWE it to yourself to BUY THIS. DO IT NOW. ITS AWESOME!!

Amazing bullet hell hori. Scoreplay is so fun I've basically only seen 3 levels, too busy finding new high risk scoring strats to worry about clearing. Always a good sign. This game is overflowing with personality, from player characters to boss design. Comfortably play with a more or less standard setup like Blue, or challenge yourself to get technical and go for crazy scores with Green. Into melee attacks? You want Purple. Try them all, find which suits you.
The graphics in motion are beautiful. Soundtrack rocks, stages are unique, bullet patterns are dense but easy to see. There looks to be a fairly engaging story as well, if you're into that kinda thing. Tons of attention to detail, such as the moving backgrounds of the character select images. Another reviewer mentioned mega man, I could totally see these little robot dudes teaming up with him in a saturday morning cartoon. Ok, off to chase S++ ranks.

Astral Gunners doesn't quite fit my shmup preferences, but you can really tell it's had a wealth of design and heart poured into it over its long early access. More than a solid horizontal shmup with distinctly varying level styles, cute and strange bullet patterns, and of course careful scoring mechanics, there's also some distinct gameplay features to play with.
Especially notable is how each character has, in addition to a meter-requiring special that clears bullets, a defensive button (with a simple, relatively short cooldown) that gives them some tool for avoiding or preventing a few hits. Naturally, you'll find higher difficulties throwing even denser and crazier bullet patterns at you to push your defense, but this still adds a layer of active play to the general fighting as well as some very distinct differences in how characters feel and function, as the same patterns have different meanings to each character.
The "system hacks" system is also quite a clever addition. There are two basic ways to play the game, each with its own leaderboard space: one is straight arcade where everyone is on the same base footing, and the other gives you a series of option points where you can (after unlocking) slot some special modifier. For example, when you use your special and charge your multiplier high enough to trigger overload status, a mini-boss you slot will come in and support the fighting with whatever thing it does. That's an advantage over arcade mode, and it gives you a choice on how overload brings some extra benefit. These aren't terribly exciting upgrades, but they do let you change up the play and alter the base difficulty (and auto-special plus auto-defend are major difficulty reductions that should make the game accessible to anyone who wants to let it handle defense and just shoot things). Good for players that need some extra help as well as those that just want more variety and some knobs to adjust, and without taking anything away from the core arcade design (or its leaderboard), which others may prefer.
System hacks used to be called "power-ups" so if you see references to this having power-ups, note that the game does not use power-ups in the normal shmup sense. It's just choices you set outside your run. Your ability/power doesn't really change as you play a run (and so doesn't drop down when you die, either).
Another aspect of variation: levels don't come in a fixed sequence, and the order you choose to attack levels has some effects, like something from the previous level showing up to lend you aid in the next.
I shouldn't neglect to mention the generous training mode for practicing levels you've cleared, and while the initial experience with the game can seem quite overwhelming and loss-heavy, the game does clearly want you to see all of it. Your first run will have no continues, or example, but if you play "easy" as intended, you'll unlock power-up options and more continues, which will get you a clear, a new character to play, and send you on your way to normal and hard with your basic boxes checked. Even if you prefer throwing yourself at the crazy levels exclusively to coasting through for easy wins, I'd recommend playing the lower difficulties a bit to knock out those early warm-up achievements, and locate the three collectibles in levels when there's less insanity flying at your face.
I find the art and visuals overly busy/detailed/bright for how much stuff and how much sheer motion there is on screen at times. You can see from the store page and trailer just how animated bullets, pickups, and such get. Definitely feel my eyes just defocusing now and then from the blur of shiny details. If you're migraine sensitive, while there are is an option to reduce bullet glow, you'll still have the pulsing bullet throb animations flowing all over the screen, and those will probably be a deal-breaker. Edit: Option to disable bullet throbbing added in the first post-release update definitely clears the migraine aspect and noticeably helps the overwhelming detail, so good on them for that upgrade.
I also wish the slower focus movement weren't quite so incredibly slow. You're quite fast when you're fast, and barely even moving when you're slow. Needing to use speed control so carefully has some interest, but since your slow movement also has shot/control consequences, it's not great to need to use it in such detail for such different things. Character speeds vary, though, so you do have some preference space. I wouldn't consider it a serious negative concern, and the slowest characters were made that slow because some people prefer that play, so for some it could be a positive.
All-in-all Astral Gunners is fun, distinct, and worth play, and it's great to see additions to the scrolling shmup field, especially since horizontals are so under served, despite the obvious shape of the screens in front of us :)