After getting S+ on every level, this is one of the best simple and short twin stick shooters that encourages getting high scores. With more or less 8 characters and 25 levels, this is a short game if completion is the goal and given how forgiving it is to progress. This game becomes worthwhile and challenging when trying to get S+ or trying to extend the chain as high as possible. Admittedly, some spawns, layout and design make this less consistent or frustrating at worst, but can still be overcome with practice and patience.

Given its indie scale and scope, this is very much recommended only if the player is hooked with achieving high scores or mastery in general.

This game was a surprisingly good time from start to finish. A twin-stick shooter with very fluid movement and gunplay, and lots of variety in the weapons and characters that you can play as. The art style is cute and I was a fan of the character designs of each of the androids, they all have charm and personality which makes me like them all. The game just looks and feels good to play. The one area I thought was lacking was the story, which was pretty simple and ends kind of abruptly, but the gameplay is great, and kept me engaged the entire way through. Getting S+ on all of the levels was quite difficult, too, but I eventually got it done, and felt very satisfied when I did. Definitely an underrated gem.

This game is amazing and it's a miracle how well it comes together. Nearly every single aspect of it is an example of ingenious design and after a couple hundred hours of playtime I'm still amazed by it.

The levels all have distinct ideas behind them - a platform moving at varying speed, an endless arena that materializes more blocks as you move to the edge of it, an arena with a rotating hazard in the center, levels with conveyor belts, levels you have to run through, etc. All are very tightly designed, and with the AAC+ update, there are more difficult remixes of them available as well.

Enemy designs are varied and well thought out - they serve different roles, different characters will need to prioritise different targets, each archetype has a different role to fulfill and the difficulty of fighting them scales differently depending on their numbers. Their simple behaviours allow you to develop an understanding of the hectic action around you and exploit their AI to your advantage. They also ensure the enemies aren't frustrating to fight.

The core mechanics are very simple, but have lots of depth. The game uses only two buttons - Fire and Switch Weapons. However, while switching weapons, your character is invincible for the duration of the animation, which means you'll need to think when deciding when to switch, and adapt when you force yourself into a corner and end up with the less ideal gun in your hands.
That's just surviving though - if you're trying to get a decent rating, you're aiming to keep your combo alive, which requires you to kill each enemy within a couple seconds from the previous, which means you'll have to plan when to switch to your more powerful weapon (with limited, but regenerating ammo) to avoid losing your kill chain either because the switch animation hasn't ended, or because you can't get instant kills with the gun you've swapped to.

There are 8 or so playable characters with completely different weapons, yet it's possible to reach maximum ranks on any level with all of them, even if sometimes it requires you to not miss a single shot in a sequence.

Each character is drastically different, making all levels worth replaying and mastering with each one.
The grading system (up to S+ rating, which means killing everything in one combo) and leaderboards give you plenty of goals to set for yourself as well, and getting good enough to master the Campaign+ levels might take you hundreds of hours.

The coop aspect of the game is top class as well, literally the best system you will see in any game. The devs managed to avoid all common problems of coop - skill difference making it problematic to play together, players sitting around ildly after failing or the game not having enough challenge when trying to avoid the previous issues. They way they achieved that is the battery system.
Each Android has a regenerating health bar, meaning each player can be knocked down. However, that doesn't remove you from the game - you can get right back up. That sounds like there are no stakes in the game, but it's not true - every time you hit the floor you lose weapon upgrade points, meaning you'll deal less damage until you kill some enemies again. You also spend some time knocked out, meaning your combo is definitely broken, and your combo score multiplier resets to 1, impacting your score a lot. You also aren't able to fight for a few seconds, which matters because the fail condition has nothing to do with players failing individually - the whole team shares a constantly depleting battery, which has to be replenished with pickups that fall out of destroyed enemies every time you've killed a certain number of them. This means everyone contributes no matter what happens, and everyone's effort matters, because every kill gets you closer to the next battery charge.

There are more things, like the level select screen rubbing the right part of your brain by displaying different icons depending on what grades you've gotten (and if you've gotten them with all characters), fun bonus modifiers to unlock (wanna play against enemy counts meant for 4 players alone, or make the character heads look proportionally sized? Or maybe you'd like to play in actual, fully functional first person mode? Well you can), and the depth created by the fact powerup pickups cycle through 3 different effects, meaning there's strategy to when you pick them up and so on, but I think the point should be clear.

Assault Android Cactus is legitimately one of the most tightly and cleverly designed games ever made. Whether you love twin stick shooters, looking for a game to master or just boot up when friends come over, you should give it a go.

I'm quite critical of games that attempt to appropriate the bullet hell aesthetic to other genres, but this one ends up holding its end of the bargain by justifying the mechanical ornamentations with a great scoring system. It pulls you between head-up-ass chaos and deliberate enemy pathing, stimulating in that way run-based games only can. Also, character variety is through the ROOF here. I wanna see someone beat ass with Aubergine, she's nutty.

I do really wish that there was a better way to interface with the upgrades, though. Having to wait for it to cycle thru to the one you need in a moment is obnoxious. Maybe shooting the upgrade with your gun accelerates the time it takes to change or something? I dunno, I'm no expert. I didn't even know why "Cactus" was in the title of the game until earlier today (it's the main character's name! She's a cop :/).