Hippo almost hits this one out of the park

Gamerhippo7 is one of the more talented game designers I know (The most talented is Darthlupi followed by 2Dcube) and has had a consistent track record of making games with simple yet colorfully vibrant graphics, a charming ORIGINAL soundtrack, simple to execute gameplay, Near-perfect-level design and ridiculously simple boss fights(that's a lot to say for one person). His latest game however puts everything I know about him to the test as he leaves the platform genre hey perfected so long ago in favor of some good old fashioned vertical shooting.

Rencara follows in the vein of old school shooters of yore like 1945 where a massive space cannon appears out of nowhere and starts killing things for no reason whatsoever. You naturally are sent out to stop it from smashing more things and travel between several colorful stages to the final destination. As you can tell, the story is completely irrelevant but is a nice touch to an already good looking game. Gameplay wise, the game is as bear bones as a shooter can get. You fly around and shoot enemies on screen. However when they die, they recharge your shield which comes in handy because the number of enemies on screen can fluctuate from tens of weak ones to dozens of harder ones in seconds. This is sort of the games charm because the difficulty curve here is near perfect. Too bad the same can't be said about the bosses. Normally hippo bosses are easy, too easy. Here, they are just as punishing as early NES bosses, where the careful scaling of stage difficulty becomes irrelevant as bosses turn a shoot-em-up into a bullet hell. Luckily, this is no Kairuga. Your shield comes in handy at these moments and iff your gaming skills are sharp (like mine), you can slug through them and feel good at the end of the day.

My only few gripes with the game are it's sprites and controlling. The game was done using typical MS paint. I have no problem with pixel art (especially if it is good) but this isn't Gamerhippo7's best looking game. It could have done with a more artistic presentation or at least a more polish. Also, the controls, though good aren't very tight, especially when you tough the edge of a wall or stage.

In all, Hippo made a successful jump to side scrolling. I see it as a "How to make a Good Shooter" that should teach noobs a thing or 2 about design. Keep it up hippo and we may be making a game together.