Vulture

Vulture is an interesting combination of Tyrian and Reassembly. Shoot things, so you can gain more blocks, so you can build yourself bigger, so you can shoot more things. Weapons all have different interactions and what worked on one stage might not pull you through the next one. This leads to starting up a new ship or stripping down the old one to tweak and see if it fares any better. Vulture doesn't have realistic physics but that is a blessing. We aren't playing Kerbal Space Program here, and if I want to build my ship into a giant question mark (or something else) that's my business!
If you enjoy shoot 'em ups and long to build your own behemoth ships to do so then Vulture is certainly worth a try. Overall my time with Vulture has been a pleasure. I'm a bit embarassed it has taken me this long to write up a positive review since reviews are what help Steam determine interest, and Vulture deserves more interest! Had an interview with one of the developers maybe half a year ago. Dude is still kicking around in my Discord and letting me know what kind of new shenanigans he's working on. Cubic Timeline deserves to go places. Definitely cool as can be. 11/10 would support.

I've been having a lot of fun playing Vulture. It's fun to design a ship, and then replaying levels to get the parts I want is quite satisfying. Plus all the decorative block types and the ability to change the colour of the blocks means you can really make anything you can imagine.
Terrain graphics are very nice. Reminiscent of the 90's game Raptor, but with its own aesthetic.
I would definitely recommend this game to anyone who likes shoot-em-up games and games with building and customizing mechanics!

Nice shoot'em up. Ship creation is quite entertaining.

An extra edit! These are turning halfway into suggestions. Whatever!
I can't quite place it, but the game's grown on me as I've gotten further into it. It's a good bit more fun once you've got some more options available to work with. The early game could use some work maybe? There's a bit of a learning curve on the design screen. The tutorial was pretty decent but was maybe too much info at once?
I also hadn't realized how much more room I had available to me on ship designs. It mentions it in the tutorial, but I had forgotten that dropdown was there for a while. Something to remind the player when there's more options in the list since the last time it was opened?
It's pretty fun once you get there, but it's a bit different, and it takes a bit of work to get there.
Prior version follows:
TL;DR: It's not a bad game, but I still had enough issues I can't recommend it yet.
Long version:
It felt a lot better overall to play, but some things still felt frustrating. One thing I noticed, I got a completely different set of random parts from enemies this time. Radar and shield blocks gave me enough warning and protection that I mostly could avoid dying abruptly... but it feels like luck that I got those drops this time around, not ship design or skill.
There's some sprite flickering and I think some things just not appearing at all, I died more than once to what I think was a ground based cannon that had a firing animation but no visible projectile or beam<Edit: Probably a flak cannon? Wasn't real clear to me until I got the part and put some on my own ship>. It's still sometimes hard to tell what caused me to die, vs losing a few parts.
That acceleration curve still seems weird to me. It's unique, I've never seen a game do anything quite like it, but there might be a reason for that. Enemies having the same effect makes it hard to predict where they'll be when your shots arrive, until you memorize their patterns. It makes some enemies and bosses difficult or really, really slow to deal with until you get more weapon options... which are RNG dependent. I've got more problems with it, but I'm having a hard time expressing it well, and it's probably an intentional design?
Suggestions!
I notice that I wind up with so much money that it's pretty ridiculous, at least at the prices I'm seeing so far- without trying for money I can already afford something like 100 of the most expensive part I have available. Maybe supplement the random part drops with an option to pay to unlock parts in case the randomizer feels stingy? A black market shop, or funding spies, something like that.
Instead of the shop button on the design screen, I would have gone with the game letting you place pieces after you ran out of inventory, and making you pay the cost before it would save the changes. Just have a running total appear over the save button.
Another handy thing would be a secondary fire button, and the ability to set weapons to one or the other button when designing. Slow firing weapons like beams might be nice to have on a separate control than my quicker firing guns. I could see this being difficult to implement on top of the existing functionality, and I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes overall, or maybe that was a design decision? Just a thought.
Maybe also an option to make your fire button a toggle, rather than holding it down. Maybe a separate control to map.
Old review with notes for updates follows:
<Updated: Less of an issue> Movement feels sluggish to accelerate, then stops on a dime.
<Updated: Less of an issue> Backing out of the design screen to buy one more part is annoying.
<Updated: Fixed> The game tells you to fly into intact enemy ship pieces to collect them, but that mostly just damages and destroys you. <Updated: Still seems to happen sometimes> They can still destroy you after they've disappeared, even.
It has it's moments, and then a boss slices you in half before you can build up any speed to dodge.

Really enjoy this game. A bit retro.

Do you remember Opentyrian? Or Tyrian itself? If so, you've got a great idea what you're getting into. Think: Build your own Tyrian ship.
If you have no idea what I'm talking about: Vulture's a 2d SHUMP, wherein you're always flying upwards, always dodging bullets, and always shooting back to get rid of those little buggars who want you dead. The quirk here is that you get to build your own ship in any fashion you like. Want a ship of twelve laser cannons to simple leave a line of death? Sure! Two missile launchers and enough capacitors to fire faster than a Robotech Rocket Circus? Doable!
As a fair warning: the game takes a bit to get into. The learning curve for making your ship work is a bit steep, and until you get some shielding blocks your ship's basically made of glass wrapped in wax paper. Luckily, you'll never be short of cash when buying copies of weapons or hull blocks to get your ship just how you like it, once the parts are unlocked.
As a side not: As fun as this game is, there's a visual quirk I just can't get past without laughing. Several of the big "boss" ships start looking less like ships, and more like someone glued wings onto buildings from the old Apple 2 or c64 version of Ultima 2 or 3, and had them fly at you to attack. Eventually I even built my own ship that looked a bit like the old weapon shops from back then. At that point, hey, it was less a game about space combat, and more about why my weapon shop was the most deadly shop of all.
Game was received via an online giveaway through Twitter.

A fun shoot'em up time passer for people who like to try a new approach every time they replay the game.