In opposition to contrary belief, the Sega 32x actually had a few good games on it and Kolibri would definitely be one of them. This game is a lot of things at once, but it is mostly a shmup style game... sort of.

Only about 1/4 of the levels are autoscrolling shmup levels. These are super easy to explain. The screen will scroll, enemies will appear and you will need to dodge them, dodge their bullets, and shoot a ton of projectiles to kill them all. When the screen reaches the end you get to go to the next level.

The rest of the levels are still shooters, but they are free roam and you have to traverse a whole level's worth of content to find the exit. These all have some sort of gimmick such as needing to defeat all the enemies in order to progress, saving plants from evil enemies, or finding bombs so you can get through impassible rocks.

The later levels become extremely long and complicated, but they have checkpoints throughout them to make life easier.

I actually liked a lot of the puzzle solving elements here and was never stumped on what to do. You travel through a lot of cave systems and there are tons of twists and turns to go on. Another thing that made all of this bearable was that there are unlimited continues and you will never be set back more than the start of the current level you are on!!! Thank god for a game from 1995 that did that.

There is a surprising amount of depth to Kolibri's weapon upgrade system. There are about 10 different types of shot and some enemies will drop orbs that can be picked up to change it. If you pick up the same orb twice in a row then your shot will upgrade. For some variants this adds a second stream of bullets, for others it makes your bullets shoot faster/do more damage. You can then further upgrade your shot to a max level of 3. Once you have a maxed out shot you can change your shot to any other variant and it will also be at level 3. Getting hit reduces your shot by 1 level. Some of the shot types are extremely over powered such as the bomb, and the triple homing shot... but you don't get to keep these forever because these do not drop from enemies during the more puzzle focused levels. Finally, there are orbs that give you extra hp. You can hold up to a total of 4 hits at any time + you can potentially find shields that prevent losing a point of hp.

The things that keep Kolibri from being an all time classic (other than just being on the 32x) are actually really annoying. One of the cardinal sins of shmups is bullets blending into the background and it seems like every bullet in Kolibri is also equipped with camouflage. They are so difficult to see and I feel like I would have survived many encounters if they were just a little more visible. Another issue are these bombs that you need to manipulate in the later levels. These things are a real pain in the ass and always detonate when you are trying to push them around. Finally, I don't think there is much reason to play this game multiple times. A score feature would have been great so that I could play for time or play for score... idk just some sort of incentive to get better at the game.

Overall, I think you will have a good time playing Kolibri and it is almost a must play for the 32x. The biggest barrier to entry here is owning a 32x, having space for its second power supply, and then spending close to 150 bucks for a loose copy of this game. Would I recommend it to most people? No... but someone will eventually read this that cares about the 32x.