I was sort of memed into playing this game, and bought it for a very low price from a product key website, so my expections going in weren't very high. I was shocked to find out that this game is actually a completely overlooked gem that is now comfortably within my top 5, maybe even top 3 favourite shmups.
Gundemonium Recollection does not the waste the player's time at all, and I mean not even a second is wasted here. Although the game is quite short even for shmup standards, with the average run length being about 18 minutes, every single second is valuable and brings something new to the table. Each stage is a constant deluge of varied boss fights and unique set pieces that gets increasingly over the top until the very end of the game.
This great fast paced stage design is combined with a scoring system that encourages the player to blast through enemies as quickly as possible and use up their extra lives to push their rank and gem drops to the limit. Each stage is divided into 4 segments each of which are on a 40 second timer and clearing a wave of enemies or defeating a named boss will cause the next wave of enemies to spawn in.
This means that although the game is an autoscroller by nature of being a shmup, it manages to capture the appeal of speedrunning and pushing yourself into performing high risk high reward feats by regularly using demonic shifts to spend a life to push your rank (dynamic difficulty) and gem drops further. This stage structure and scoring system gives Gundemonium a very unique and addictive gameplay loop that gets you to care about the scoring system in a more tangible way than most other shmups.
Although the anime artstyle (with some very fanservicey character designs that leave little to the imagination) won't appeal to everyone, the presentation is overall highly polished and the arranged soundtrack by DM Ashura absolutely slaps. The only issue with recommending this game nowadays is that the publisher Rockin Android decided not to renew their contract on steam, meaning that there is no way to get this game on PC in a way that gives the developers your money. You will have to use a product key website like I did or buy the PS4 version.
Gundemonium Recollection does not the waste the player's time at all, and I mean not even a second is wasted here. Although the game is quite short even for shmup standards, with the average run length being about 18 minutes, every single second is valuable and brings something new to the table. Each stage is a constant deluge of varied boss fights and unique set pieces that gets increasingly over the top until the very end of the game.
This great fast paced stage design is combined with a scoring system that encourages the player to blast through enemies as quickly as possible and use up their extra lives to push their rank and gem drops to the limit. Each stage is divided into 4 segments each of which are on a 40 second timer and clearing a wave of enemies or defeating a named boss will cause the next wave of enemies to spawn in.
This means that although the game is an autoscroller by nature of being a shmup, it manages to capture the appeal of speedrunning and pushing yourself into performing high risk high reward feats by regularly using demonic shifts to spend a life to push your rank (dynamic difficulty) and gem drops further. This stage structure and scoring system gives Gundemonium a very unique and addictive gameplay loop that gets you to care about the scoring system in a more tangible way than most other shmups.
Although the anime artstyle (with some very fanservicey character designs that leave little to the imagination) won't appeal to everyone, the presentation is overall highly polished and the arranged soundtrack by DM Ashura absolutely slaps. The only issue with recommending this game nowadays is that the publisher Rockin Android decided not to renew their contract on steam, meaning that there is no way to get this game on PC in a way that gives the developers your money. You will have to use a product key website like I did or buy the PS4 version.