Rolling Gunner feels like an early 2000s indie/doujin game in a lot of ways. It looks like shit, is derivative of other, better works and the only way to get a legitimate copy on PC is to get mailed a DVD copy from Japan.

When judging a game like this, I feel theres a conflict between judging it on it's own merits as being a very small thing done as a passion project, or judging it compared to the relative juggernauts of the genre. And for a game that shares so much with the Cave titles Deathsmiles and Akai Katana - including it's Lead Developer - judging it outside of the context of those games - which it is really weaker than, spoilers - is quite difficult.

Honestly, even as super low budget indie games go, there's very little excuse for the game looking quite as bad as it does. Not only is the art style hopelessly generic, but below average prerendered sprite work and stage backgrounds with incredibly wonky perspective leave the game looking closer to a Geocities site than Dodonpachi.

But the game is fortunately quite fun. It's core conceit is similar to deathsmiles in that a gun circles your ship and fires opposite to your direction of travel unless you are holding down heavy shot, whilst combined with a "collect items and get hyper mode" system which largely dictates your scoring (very similar to Akai Katana and Deathsmiles). Beyond that, the game feels very Cave-lite in general, with the levels ending up feeling pretty repetitive(this game has a looot of enemy reuse) , and outside of the excellent stage 3, largely lacking any real sense of identity.

Still, the game has some great bullet patterns, controls really nicely, and honestly, if Deathsmiles didn't exist i could reccomend it in a heartbeat... And that's where that conflict rears its head. A perfectly strong game on it's own merits that does well for what it is but its effectively outshone by a game that already exists, is cheaper, is easier to access and has way more content to it.

That's not to say i didn't enjoy Rolling Gunner, it's got great flow and is a good Cave-lite, which is more than Cave have put out in the last 7 years so i'll take it. But when theres some really wacky shit in the indie/dounjin shmup space, its a shame that Rolling Gunner, easily the highest profile one in recent times, is so tame.