Barrage Fantasia

Barrage Fantasia is a vertically scrolling shooter by Hanaji, released for Steam and Nintendo Switch.

1) Steam description

Story

A girl named Herb who claims to be a great witch lives in a poisonous swamp on the outskirts of a faraway country. One day, a red jewel is stolen from a shrine under her control. Herb escapes the swamp for the first time in order to recover her jewels.

Characters

Herb

The hero and self-proclaimed great witch. She lives near Poison Swamp and her business is to manage shrines and make suspicious potions from herbs. She respects her grandmother, a court mage, and is a hard worker who does not miss her magical training every day.

Rose

The bandit leader of a bandit and commander of the Pigmen. She thinks all in the world is for her as a justification to rob it. She hates to lose and will continue to fight alone even after the departure of her comrades Balun and Philet.

Baran

Part of Rose's entourage, the tall one. He is good at developing mechas, and most of the bandits' mechas were designed by Baran. He has a gentlemanly personality and respects Fillet's ideas to the fullest.

Fillet

Part of Rose's entourage, the short one. A strategic and cunning tactician. His motto is to run away before he gets into a rough pinch.

Features

- An adorable retro SHMUP with 5 stages + 3 challenges.

- Arcade mode that lets you play through 5 stages in a row and a short mode that allows you to play any stage you choose.

- Training mode lets you choose to skip to and play through part of any stage to practice to even further perfection!

- 16 different regular and 4 challenge bosses

- Challenge different bosses, each with their own breakable parts for maximum score attack.

- Vary your play style with multiple different combinations of Familiar Attack types, Bomb settings, and Life settings for multiple replayability.

- Simple and unique graphics and fun music to match

2) Graphics

The game features a retro pixel art aesthetic using a low resolution with chunky pixels. Visuals are colorful and present stark contrasts between background and foreground. Due to pixel size the actual play area is rather small and offers little room to maneuver especially when there's lots of enemy bullets on screen. Resolution is fixed but players are able to choose between windowed or fullscreen modes. Currently (as of January 2022) the game doesn't remember user settings, so the player has to engage fullscreen mode every time the game is started. The game runs at a fixed rate of 60 fps. There's no Tate mode available.

3) Sound

The game's music and sound effects are made in a style reminiscent of old 8-bit consoles like the NES. BGM tunes are upbeat and melodic, reminding the player of games like Mega Man and the likes.

4) Gameplay

Tutorial Stage - When the player starts up the game for the first time, a specially designed tutorial level will play. This level teaches newcomers the basics like movement, attack and dodging. After completing the tutorial stage, it will still be accessible later in "Short" and "Training" mode.

Modes - The game features three different modes to play:

Arcade - Arcade mode lets the player start from the first of 5 stages. All levels are played in a row offering no continues.

Short - Short mode lets the player choose which stage to play. After completing a level, the player is taken back to the short mode menu in order to choose another stage or replay the previous one.

Training - In training mode the player can choose specific parts of a stage in order to practice difficult sections of the game.