💎 PREMIUM: App/ - Full Gallery 2025

I initially picked this up on Switch out of respect. After Milestone fell apart, then Klon, no one would have blamed these guys for going and being code monkeys at Capcom or wherever. Yet they kept it real, kept doing their thing, and I respect that. That said, I wasn't expecting much, as I wasn't the biggest fan of the original Radirgy (thought it was a bit of a mess. Still do, tbh)

So I was flat-out shocked how much I REALLY liked Swag. It was like they reinvented the wheel, and successfully took the genre from big-screen machines in arcades to small-screen machines on the bus/train/subway. While there's no shortage of ports of vertical arcade shooters on the Switch, the hardware itself isn't exactly optimal for playing them. You have 2/3 of an already small screen that's unused, and in the usable third you're controlling a small ship, shooting small enemies, and dodging really, really small bullets. And that's before you have to fight a boss that takes up a third of the usable third, now making the playfield on the six-inch screen REALLY small.

Radirgy Swag remedies ALL of this, while preserving the experience and enjoyment one gets from playing these games to begin with. A run is 10-12 minutes long tops (you can achieve special criteria to extend this) of non-stop action (seriously, there's no stage breaks). It's very fast, very hectic, but you will have fun, and you will totally forget about that guy across from you who may be dangerously insane. Not to mention, you won't have to don 6x reading glasses to do this, as everything is big, bright, and pops off the screen.

The Steam version is identical to the Switch except the instructional text is now in English (the 'flavor' spam messages that pop up are still in kanji). However, per the norm with this dev, a lot is left mysterious and is up to player discovery. In interest of full disclosure, my first run on Windows was rough for whatever reason (lots of dropped frames and stuttering), but it ran identical to Switch after a re-launch (oddly, I didn't have this issue on my lower spec linux machine. Go figure...)

Is this a good showcase of your understanding of deep mechanics and pattern memorization? Absolutely not. It's a sugar-rush of a shooter you can carry around in your bag. But if you have an affinity for the genre and a steam deck (or the like), you pretty much NEED this (especially for what they're selling it for). It's a real good time on a regular monitor too.

I adore this game. Radirgy's always good, and this is a unique and really cool take on it. I've never played another shmup quite like this. The distance-based goal and speed mechanics gives it a very specific kind of gameflow that's very easy to get into. Port's good too!

You pilot a garbage collecting neet into space in search of a coffee machine.