Stellavanity - Normal 1cc - Lemulene Type S (rank 0, strict rule mode)

Stellavanity: Prelude to the Destined Calamity is a doujin bullet hell by a Japanese guy called "TRIS-GRAM" and has its own notoriety within the shmup community for its hyperbolic gameplay.

It's really difficult to describe Stellevanity as it's mechanics are far more complex than most other shmups i have played. For one, i use 6 buttons on my arcade stick rather than the usual 2 or 3 with other games. Each button has a unique attack and is used for scoring. There's your regular shot, your slow focus shot, an 'assult' attack that sends homing missles towards a targeted enemy (this can be automated), a blade attack for melee and final blows, and a thing called ES/DS which is a bit trickier to use.

Using all these tools you can indulge in some crazy scoring techniques. Summarized here by a wonderful person in my Discord:

"coins increase your multiplier on top left of the screen, which is a magnifier, when you beat enemies they drop more items, to gain coins just kill enemies, overkilling with blade gives you more coins, the manual teaches you that the best way of "overkilling" would be to stop, use assault and then blade when enemy health is really low.

etheral shift gives you infinite blades to continue your multiplier combo, you can spam it however you see it fit but its only one part of scoring.

delayed shift turns enemy bullet into gems when you defeat them, it will increase the amount of bullet an enemy shoots on screen. it increases as you pick pink gem items dropped from enemies, when activated the pink item will increase your counter shift gauge which attacks all enemies on screen damaging and give you a significant bonus depending how your combo green bar increased"

Sounds complex? it is! and i only tried to mess with it in the first 2 to 3 stages before switching to pure survival strategies. Thankfully focusing on some scoring early helped snag an extra life at 20 million.

There are multiple routes through the stages and you get to choose but at the end of the day you end up at Stage 7 and the last boss (there are secret TRUE last bosses but im not sure what conditions must be met to reach them). Stage 7 was truly exhaustingly long, which is typical for final arcade games/shmups but the last boss was a bit underwhelming which im sure is to give you a little break from the length of the level and leave room for a true last boss should you trigger it.

I love this game so much, I have already expressed my love of doujin shmups and their charming homebrew presentation but this one has just a little more love and polish than many others. If you are interested in purchasing the game its relatively cheap and runs on modern operating systems.

Enjoy the run! Don't mind the 10 seconds of black screen at the beginning (i had to record this in OBS)

Maybe i will come back and do a higher difficulty or shoot for a higher score

https://youtu.be/qC7zUIh68lg