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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0SQ2q2kr-A The Void Rains Upon Her Heart is a boss-rush bullet-hell game where you fight through your choice of several randomized side-scrolling boss battles and collect power-ups on the way to the final boss. What sets it apart from other shmups gameplay-wise is that the entire game is built around a rogue-lite progression system where meeting certain milestones and earning achievements unlocks new bosses, abilities, playable characters, and bits of ephemera. This means that the game has a very gentle difficulty curve and a shitload of ways to keep yourself entertained and engaged as you play over and over: do you risk derailing a good run to try and complete one of the unique puzzle-esque challenges on a rare boss? Do you give up a power-up now so you can use it in a future run, or hold onto it? Do you challenge an unknown boss to add it to your compendium, even if you also have no idea what its strengths and weaknesses are? I'm someone who never really was into shmups before and I've put in over 100 hours in this game over the past six months and I still come back to it on a weekly basis and have things I haven't unlocked yet, The Binding of Isaac was an explicit source of inspiration for the game's roguelite elements and it absolutely nails it. Also, with few exceptions every boss character has multiple levels of difficulty, gradually layering on more and more complex bullet patterns and additional attacks, so even though you'll be fighting each of the now 74 bosses in the game countless times there's a lot of variation even within the same boss. For example, this gif compares an early boss at low and high difficulty levels  Graphically the game draws heavy inspiration from the weird otherworldly hell beasts that show up at the end of Kirby games, lots of simple shapes and ominous floating eyes and wings and glyphs. Also all the characters in the game are female, not for horny reasons but in a conspicuous push back against game characters always defaulting to male pronouns. The humanoid alien characters are all nude but it's G-rated artistic nudity, and the game even has an option to cloak them in mist if the outline of a boob on the pause screen distracts from your gaming. The game has been in early access since 2018 with frequent updates and this year is when version 1.0 is going to come out, the story is the last bit the creator is going to complete so what's there is incomplete, but if you're into Lore there's tons of item descriptions to delve through and if not then outside of the tutorial cutscenes are relatively scarce and always skippable. https://twitter.com/VeyeralGames/status/1380718696688087040?s=20 Some of the elements of the game can be obtuse and there isn't a lot of documentation since this is a relatively obscure game, if you need any help feel free to ask here or on their very nice Discord channel. If you need more persuading I made a video about the game a few months ago, I really love and connect with this game and you should play it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9dHyT1kW1c
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May 26, 2021 17:27
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| # ? May 8, 2024 11:00 |
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I bought this in the most recent winter sale and like a dumbass still haven't installed it. I only dabble in bullet hells, but everything I've read about and seen of this game has made it sound a little special. Seems like if it resonates with someone then it really resonates with them. I hope I'm not setting myself up for disappointment, but I have very high expectations for when I'll actually get around to playing it... some... day...
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May 26, 2021 17:42
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Glare Seethe posted:I bought this in the most recent winter sale and like a dumbass still haven't installed it. I only dabble in bullet hells, but everything I've read about and seen of this game has made it sound a little special. Seems like if it resonates with someone then it really resonates with them. I hope I'm not setting myself up for disappointment, but I have very high expectations for when I'll actually get around to playing it... some... day... It's a great game to keep installed and play in between other games because of how bite-sized a lot of the content is. That's the niche its been filling for me for the past few months, at least.
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May 26, 2021 18:27
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this game rules, definitely one to check out. looking forward to the full release
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May 27, 2021 19:04
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One thing I love about this game is that the different types of ships actually play really differently, especially within the framework of the randomized boss progression. Each of the four hearts in Void Rains, by comparison: Her Heart: The basic ship. Autofires a stream of bullets with a charge attack. Typical shmup character. The one real weakness is that both her regular attack and her charge attack are the same element so if you wind up facing an enemy resistant to them Defect: Plays similarly to Her Heart with the major difference that it has a lower max HP but in exchange gets a full recovery after every battle. This was created with less experienced players in mind and I recommend trying to unlock this ASAP because especially when you're new to the game it's a relief to not have to worry about nursing a persistent health bar through the game even if you are more fragile in the here and now. Twin Heart: This is the ultimate risk/reward character, instead of shooting hearts you shoot feathers which have a short range but fire multiple projectiles at once in a fan than you can focus to narrow further. You have to get right up in the boss' face which makes dodging attacks harder but makes up for it with how quickly it can eat through enemy healthbars. And since keeping combos going is such a big part of the scoring system you have a ranged charge shot to keep it going when you have to fall back and dodge. The Devil: My least favorite to play as but still an interesting gimmick: You have a little meter that fills when you sit still and drains when you move, and how full that meter is determines your fire rate. On lower difficulties you can plan ahead and park yourself in a nice spot and rain death uninterrupted for a good while but lategame this becomes much less feasible. Luckily your charge attack is a wide spread so you can hit enemies without having to move to line up with them. The Devil has upgrades related to their unique mechanism so you can earn cards that make the bar fill faster or have a higher ceiling.
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May 31, 2021 23:04
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One thing to note about the Devil's star shot is that focused movement drains the bar much more slowly than regular movement, so you want to stay in focus mode as much as possible. You can also get the feather and star shot types as random upgrades on other characters.
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Jun 1, 2021 08:57
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| # ? May 8, 2024 11:00 |
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I've been playing this game for two years (or more?) and what strikes me is how much content has been added over time. This was an interesting cheap indie shmup a couple years ago and now has 3-5 times as much content, and a million things to keep it interesting. It's based around unlocks so you keep getting rewards for playing, but it's also the case that there are many ways to challenge yourself at various levels of gameplay (no experience with shmups needed).
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Jun 8, 2021 12:22
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