Uploaded May 2023 | Updated September 2026, 8 minutes ago

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Gunvein is a bullet hell shmup published by NGDev and developed by Boghog, a member of the shmup community. It came out back in November of last year on Steam and recently, the game got ported over to the Nintendo Switch. This is NGDev's first time publishing an original game that was developed originally for PC, as they have been known in the past for creating games for older consoles in limited quantities.

Honestly, this has to be among the very best western shmups ever made. There was a time when Japan had an obvious stranglehold on the arcade shmup market, but that is no longer the case. This game holds its own with the heavy hitters like CAVE and Psikyo just fine. Gameplay wise, it's like the love child of SDOJ, Crimzon Clover, and a Raizing shmup like Battle Garegga. This is one of the few shmups that encourages aggressive usage of bombs, as it's a significant part of the scoring and not just meant for defensive purposes. The lock on shots for the Type A and Type B ships are reminiscent of Crimzon Clover, but Type C has a chargeable mini bomb in its place that makes it a very interesting ship, which I'll discuss soon enough.

You also have a hyper system that involves holding the Bomb button for a few seconds, giving you some brief invincibility frames at the beginning of it and increased damage for 4-5 seconds after activation. This is surprisingly useful for survival, but it costs you fragments that you gather throughout the stages to make your bombs. Speaking of fragments, you get those from filling up that Ready meter at the top right of the screen and using your lock-on shot at certain parts of the stages marked by a star.

As far as presentation goes, it's excellent for an indie shmup. The graphics are top notch, though I did scale back the effects and darken the background slightly to maximize bullet visibility (not that it was bad in the first place though). It's also a bit more demanding hardware-wise on PC than your typical indie shmup on Steam because of the bells and whistles of the graphics. The soundtrack done by Exemia is a great fit for the game and the chaotic action that it presents.

This run was done on Intense difficulty, which is Gunvein's equivalent of a Normal mode. As this difficulty, the game is quite challenging and comes close to matching the difficulty of a Cave game. The difficulty curve for the most part is pretty gradual outside of the Stage 3 Boss and Final Boss being big spikes, but the game is faster-paced than most shmups. I chose Type C because that ship does the best damage and is also the fastest, making it ideal for speed-killing enemies as soon as they get on screen. Type C's bomb is not the best for doing damage, but it does have some extra i-frames after it is done firing off. Also, you need to be at a distance from enemies in order for it to hit them with that bomb.

While this run considering only of the main campaign, this game even has a Roguelike mode, which adds level ups granting you power-ups and messes with the layouts of stages considerably. I have not spent any time with this mode, but I may do so at some point. This may be a selling point for anyone looking for a roguelike shmup.

If you love shmups and haven't played this game yet, I highly recommend it.

Also, shout outs to @morsalty and @clippa because their runs were very helpful to me early on for learning how the game worked when it first came out.

00:21 Stage 1
03:33 Stage 2
06:58 Stage 3
10:53 Stage 4
14:43 Stage 5
18:02 Final Boss

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