Playing Every Game in the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality
PEGBRJE: ‘Woter — A tale of two water cans’ and ‘Super Crome: Bullet Purgatory’
2D Extravaganza
Woter — A tale of two water cans is a co-operative arcade game created by Electrodev, a solo dev based in Italy. Players are part of an elite defense force called upon by the flower of Flower Hills after a dangerous airship arrived and started dropping strange mecha-balls. This defense force is, of course, a set of watering cans ready to dish out pain and healing.
Woter focuses on the synergy between the two players, specifically that one is a harmful watering can while the other is a healing can. The colours may confuse, as the blue is the violent one of the group and the red is healing, but that only takes a moment to rectify in the brain.
Once the level begins, both players will navigate the platforms to perform their tasks, such as blue killing the mechas and red watering the flower to heal back the damage caused by said mechas. But watering cans don’t hold infinite water, and each one has a bar to correspond with how much water they have left.
The only way to fill it back up is at their corresponding coloured fountain, which poses a dilemma as more enemies begin to arrive. Does the player have enough time to rush down and refill, or will the enemies pile up too much for their companion to handle?
It’s a small game, but it puts an interesting spin on the traditional ‘infinite survival’ game since both players can only interact with the game in opposite ways. If you’ve got a friend that wants to save a flower with you, then give this a whirl.
Super Crome: Bullet Purgatory is a 2D space bullet hell created by Stumphead Games, a solo indie dev based in the USA. Fast forwarding to the future of 40XX, our protagonist Crome will embark on a dangerous mission to uncover just what is causing so many galactic mishaps, stumbling across a terrifying armada of creatures from beyond the void.
Crome is fitted with a ship reminiscent of the retro days, and will fly through hordes upon hordes of enemies that are hellbent on destroying him. Each level has a distinct theme and randomizes the waves to give some flavour, but players will perform the same task no matter what; gun them all down with bullets.
The standard gun will be the primary source of damage, while the dash will be the primary way of getting out of sticky situations since Crome’s ship can only take a single hit of these void creature bullets.
As enemies are destroyed, they will drop little energy pellets which will get sucked in if the player stops shooting, which fills in the bar at the top left. This bar is for the mega shot, which is charged up and fired to damage a large area upon impact. The charge also sucks up the energy pellets, but can only be initiated if there is enough charge in the bar to fire.
Once a certain distance is acquired, the boss of the level appears, and for everyone familiar with bullet hells this is where things start to get spooky. Bullets will come thick and fast, and its health bar will seem to never go down fast enough.
Nevertheless, perseverance will reward the player with a score tally and a set of upgrades to choose from. These can range from passives that give little helpers, a new bullet type that binds to a new button, and more. These can be refused if necessary, and they may be tied to performance (I couldn’t tell in the time I played), but once a new arsenal is complete the next level can be started.
It may be due to my repeated exposure to the genre thanks to the bundle, but I found myself enjoying Super Crome: Bullet Purgatory more than I expected. The neon colours of the enemies with the contrasting bullets gave for some fun colour combinations, and the sound track was surprisingly catchy as it ingrained in to my brain.
I still found it just as hard as the other bullet hells, and I was on Normal: I have no idea how you fans of the genre can survive on Hard, but you can and it is scary.
Nevertheless, with continued support for the game still happening I’d recommend anyone that enjoys retro bullet hells to give this one a shot.
Do note that it is urrently in version 0.31, which is the version I played. There are older versions in 0.25, 0.23 and 0.18.1 that you may be familiar with. According to the difference in visuals and the update notes the 0.3 update altered much of the game, so if you had played it before then you might want to come back and see the changes.
