(screenshots taken from game's homepage)
Cambria Sword -Life of Wonder- is a PC doujin shmup released in 2016 by Vagues Games (which is really just one person). Set in an alternate vision of the Cambrian Period where trilobites had jetpacks, lasers, and energy swords, it calls itself an orthodox shooter without any innovative systems. It is also a big breath of fresh air in the genre, and the most fun I've had with a shmup in years.
So what's so great about this game?
- The most epic tale starring a flying Sarotrocercus - The first thing anyone will tell you about this game is that it's long. Like, really long. A full playthrough of all 11 stages takes over three hours, but for those of you who balk at that length (i.e. sane people), the game allows you to skip stages, allowing you to reach the ending in as little as four stages (1 to 1.5 hours). Clearly a game this long isn't going to have the tight design and conciseness of a CAVE or Psikyo game, and I'm not going to pretend that it does. There are definitely parts that could have been cut down or compressed if the goal were to make a shorter game that would realistically fit in an arcade setting, but what makes the game great is that that's not the point and it knows it.
Cambria Sword tells a tale of epic proportions about a Sarotrocercus out to rescue its friend Pikaia from the fearsome Anomalocaris, and it cuts no corners in doing so. You'll journey through a variety of huge stages, blowing up everything in the way with big fiery explosions. This game does have some environmental hazards, though it's not really heavy on these and the bosses are the real stars of the show; think "Darius" rather than "Gradius" or "R-Type" (though I should mention that the developer has said that similarities to Darius are unintentional and that Darius actually wasn't one of the primary inspirations for Cambria Sword). There are intense sections flooded with enemies, and there are lulls in the action. There are also plenty of cool setpieces along the way, whether for advancing the plot or simply introducing enemies (which I guess is also kind of the plot). It doesn't have the range of disparate locales that something like Gradius does, but it puts you through a wide gamut of different situations, and suffice it to say that it's quite the journey.
Also, with the sheer amount of content it's a better buy than your average shmup even if you only play through each of the stages once in practice mode... - Dozens of awesome bosses - Naturally a game of this length has room for plenty of bosses, and Cambria Sword is packed to the brim with them. The game dispenses with the formulaic "each stage has one boss at the end and maybe one at the halfway point," instead spreading bosses throughout the stages as it sees fit. It's not the first game to do that, but it helps the game's pacing and I think it gives an idea of what kind of game this is. Like the other enemies in the game, the bosses are based on lifeforms from the Cambrian and surrounding geological periods, and they inherit the diversity those lifeforms are famous for. There are bosses of all shapes and sizes that demand a variety of ways of dealing with them. Each boss has a set of attacks that it chooses from randomly (I think). Honestly some of the boss attacks are kind of cheap (they could use some more telegraphing) but I don't think it detracts too much from the experience, since it's mostly a risk in using close-range weapons and there are plenty of lives to go around so doing poorly on one or two bosses probably isn't going to kill your run. At any rate, my awe when playing the boss rush stage for the first time in practice mode by itself justified my purchase.
I'll also take the time now to note the game's graphics, since the bosses are the highlight of those. The game's graphics probably won't look "professional" to anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past 25 years (the colors in particular remind me of old Windows 95 games), but they're inspired and appealing in their own way. I was surprised by how good the game looks in motion, especially the bosses with their tons of segmented moving parts.
On a side note, despite the game explicitly stating that it's not a paleontology guide, I've learned a surprising amount of natural history from searching up the boss names and watching the videos YouTube started recommending me about the Cambrian Period... - Huge variety of quirky weapons - One of the other things you may have heard about this game is that it has a ton of weapons. The game's website says there are over a hundred, though I think this may be counting charged and non-charged attacks of the same weapon separately. You can carry a primary weapon and a subweapon, and there's a over a dozen "normal" types of each of those. Each primary weapon has a charged attack and a non-charged attack, and a few have additional firing modes triggered by using a charge attack while moving in a certain direction. Additionally, there are "rare" variants of each of these weapons, which are generally more powerful than but oftentimes quite different from their "normal" variants. So that totals to... a lot. Weapon pickups are given through various means but the specific weapons given are random, with "rare" weapons being exceptionally rare. The weapons span a wide range with different strengths and weaknesses; some are slow, some are fast, some pierce enemies, some don't, some fire behind you or above/below you, some only fire straight forwards, some do high burst damage, others deal more continuous damage... There's no single weapon that's good in all situations, so that combined with the randomness of weapon drops means you're forced to adapt to changing circumstances. It's almost like a roguelike in that sense, except with fixed stages so you know what to prepare for. Getting comfortable with the weapons and understanding their strengths and weaknesses is a big part of this game, and I've had a lot of fun playing around with the different weapons. The extreme rarity of "rare" weapons is one of my few complaints about the game since you'll rarely get to play with the more insane half of the weapons in the game, but the unlockable "Easy" mode deals with that by making rare weapons spawn much more frequently (this is actually the only difference between easy mode and normal mode).
Additionally, there are several types of bombs (the type you have depends on your current subweapon), ranging from the traditional but satisfying to the hilariously impractical. Though some bombs are good as panic bombs, this game serves as a better example of how to do offensive bombs right, because incidentally the default bomb is one of the best offensive bombs in the game and it's also incredibly satisfying to use. Since there's neither any penalty nor reward for using bombs, there's no reason not to use them when it suits you, which I think is great. The game doesn't need to push you to use bombs because using them is its own reward. - No real scoring system to speak of - There's a distinct lack of multipliers, chaining, fancy item timings, etc. in this game - the scoring system is your barebones, run-of-the-mill "kill enemies and get points," and the developer mentions in the extra disc notes that he considered not having a scoring system at all (but he kept it in as a way to distinguish between your runs). This actually works in the game's favor: it's what allows the "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to the rest of the game to exist without breaking everything. Scoring, at least in a competitive sense, clearly was never the focus of this game; Cambria Sword isn't in the business of "balancing" things or providing everyone a "level playing field" every run, and it doesn't need to be. The game doesn't distract you from enjoying the game by pushing you to optimize asinine things in the name of raising a number; no scoring means no frustration over scoring. This is the kind of game where I don't get frustrated over some unideal luck like bad weapon drops or luck bar effects, and I don't even bother resetting if I lose a life in the first stage. And I like that.
(Yes, you could milk everything and try to get lucky with the luck bar effects, but the mere thought of doing that in a game that's already three hours long without milking should be enough to tell you that you're missing the point of the game.) - The most metal shmup ever made - All of the above comes together to form what is perhaps the most badass, unexpectedly metal game in existence, and what would that be without an awesome metal soundtrack? Cambria Sword's soundtrack is phenomenal, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who thinks that. Of course there's an element of taste to this, but if you don't love the soundtrack, well, you have bad taste. This is really what makes the whole game come together and crystallizes its ethos. Not only is it catchy and thrilling to listen to, it's also quite varied, with both really heavy and intense pieces as well as more calm and mellow pieces, lending each stage its own character. The game comes with the soundtrack if you buy it on DLsite, but I don't think it's uploaded on YouTube or anywhere else, so if you want to listen to it you'll have to either buy the game or make do with the trailers or gameplay videos (some linked below). A good soundtrack can easily be ruined by annoying or unfitting sound effects, but Cambria Sword does not disappoint here either; the weapons and enemy explosions have deep and satisfying explosion effects that further cement the weighty power of your little arthropod friend. I find this quite a pleasant surprise, especially for a doujin game.
So where do I get this game?
Cambria Sword is available on the English DLsite (DRM-free digital distribution), where it is currently 20% off until July 11, thanks to a site-wide sale. The game comes with a bunch of "extra disc" contents, which includes the soundtrack (!!!) as well as an extensive HTML-format guide and collection of notes. The extra disc materials are in Japanese but are reasonably understandable through machine translation. The game itself is entirely in English.
There is also a demo, which is limited to the first two stages (~1/12 the full game's length) and a subset of the weapons. Personally I think the game really starts to shine on stages 3 and 4, but I think the demo is still a fair way to try the game if you go in understanding that what you're playing is merely the introduction to the rest of the game. It was enough to sell me on the game at least.
If you like having discs of things, you can find that here (linked from the game's homepage, I don't know anything about this including whether they ship overseas).
So what are you waiting for? Go live out the metal fantasy you didn't know you had. Go blow up prehistoric lifeforms with extreme prejudice. Go play Cambria Sword.
Links:
- Developer homepage: http://www2.tba.t-com.ne.jp/vagues/
- Game homepage: http://www2.tba.t-com.ne.jp/vagues/games_01.html
- DLsite English (Buy the game or download the trial here): http://www.dlsite.com/eng/work/=/produc ... 92078.html
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWTFdsGlfxs
(developer's channel; you can find the rest of the trailers on the same channel) - Full playthrough on Easy mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNdBxZKMUGQ
(Easy mode is the same as normal mode except that rare weapons have a much higher chance of spawning, so this video also demonstrates many of the quirky rare weapons in the game)