Bite-sized Review
Talus

By Chris Picone, 06 March 2023

A short but sweet bullet hell with gnarly pixel art and a great retro soundtrack.  It looks and sounds great and I had a lot of fun playing it - but I was playing a pre-release copy and did bump into a few issues that I'm hoping the dev will have sorted by the time it hits stores (I spoke to the dev and he's working on fixing those issues).

Aesthetics

A little dark but otherwise the pixel art's gorgeous.  The monster's look cool, the bullets are easy to see, I love all the symbols and even the font. It's a great looking game.

Gameplay

It's a boss rush-style bullet hell.  The only real innovation is that in between each boss fight you get to pick from one of five different bullet types.  I'm guessing the idea is that when you try to fight one of the bosses and die, ending your run, you could try for a different strategy the next time around.  I love the idea behind that but in the game's current state the bullets move really slowly so there's not enough challenge to require a reload. 

Verdict

Looks and sounds great.  My main concern is that the game's far too easy, and the sort of people that enjoy bullet hell games are usually up for a challenge.  My only other concern is that there's only five levels, so the whole game only took me around 15 minutes to beat.  The bullet patterns are solid and I love the idea of the different weapons so I'm really hoping the dev adds some harder difficulty modes.  

Links: 

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2209940/Talus/