Soar your way through 4 worlds and defeat fearsome bosses on the search for your lost friend. Discover the true nature of the world and reconnect.

While this game is fully featured on web, the HTML build has some performance and audio-loading issues.
For the best experience, play on desktop. Thanks!

Controls:

Arrow Keys - Move
Z - Shoot
X - Focus
Space - Spin

Controls can be changed in the options menu

Features:

4 stages host to elaborate boss fights.
Numerous tight bullet patterns.
A lovingly crafted Original Soundtrack
12 Achievements To Unlock
Charming Pixel Art Graphics

Credits:

sirmilkman - Programming, Design
squp - Programming, Art, Design, writing
sarn - Music, Sound Effects.

Additional Art & Cover by pikol
Warning Sound Effect: Oroshibu
Playtesters: Valentine, Waporwave
Design help: Heraga

Created in one month for Boss Rush Jam 2025

More information

Status	Released
Platforms	HTML5, Windows
Rating	Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars (29 total ratings)
Authors	sirmilkman, sarn, squp
Genre	Shooter, Action
Made with	GameMaker
Tags	Boss battle, Bullet Hell, Pixel Art, Shoot 'Em Up

Download

Oplero WIN.zip 30 MB

Comments

TheJohnyFeeD64 days ago

Stumbled upon this while looking up bossrush shmups - and it's amazing. Absolutely insane quality and care for a freeware game. I beg you to put this on Steam and take my cash

SonofTzeentch9139 days ago

Hi, cool game; I did a 1cc of this (video below - the video description has a bit of a review from a shmup player perspective too).

Separately from that, I had 2 questions:

Question 1: is there any way for me to know when or how to hit the par time on the 4th boss? Since there's no ending stats like with the previous 3 bosses, I would never be able to tell whether or not I got a perfect run (i.e. while I can see for myself when I have been hit or continued, I can't see if I met the par time requirements, since I don't know them).

To clarify, this is not about achieving it once - I have done so according to the achievements menu - it is about knowing if I have achieved it in any given run that I just completed. This is important for people trying to aim for a perfect run (or for a higher score for that matter), as it is kind of frustrating to have to just assume that one was fast enough or not.

Question 2: Is there any reward for a perfect run? Like an extra boss phase or differing ending text? The game's ending text reads a bit as if that were not the case, as it doesn't seem to be the point of the game. It's important in shmups though to give player incentive with some sort of goal they can reach for.

squp139 days ago (1 edit) (+1)

hi! thank you for the 1CC!

Question 1: Unfortunately not. The ending was added in a rush towards the end of the jam, and we didn't get to polish it up as much as I'd have liked. Through checking the code i can confirm the par time is exactly 3 minutes.

Question 2: Unfortunately not(2)... I would have liked to have added something like that, but again, gamejam time constraints. I'd like to revisit this game's core ideas again but with more refined implementation and without an encroaching deadline sometime! Perhaps then there could be a TLB or loop or something.

With regards to the video description, I really really really agree about the bullets. I remember towards the end of the jam changing them to use point collision rather than a hitbox (ala Ketsui) but because the deadline was so close I reverted it. I also agree about the 4th boss.

Thank you so much for playing!

SonofTzeentch9138 days ago(+1)

I see; yeah gamejam time windows can be pretty tight and getting something of this quality done in one is already pretty impressive.

Knowing the par time is 3 minutes for the last boss is VERY helpful, so thanks for checking that! With that info I'll definitely come back to the game at a later date and try tp get a perfect run done.

Will definitely keep my eye out for any mechanical-spiritual successor of this game (should you guys ever make one).

In any case, thanks for replying & making the game!

Anwynn161 days ago

Great game 💖💖💖

Tinypot250 days ago

A really cool bullet hell, very polished.

hellomoto0289250 days ago

killed the first boss but then died

minotalen275 days ago (1 edit)

Amazing as usual! Is score supposed to reset when I restart? Cause it just kept going up :D

Will try again tomorrow, beat it but last boss took like 5 attempts.

sirmilkman275 days ago

thank you for playing!!!! :)

Also, nope! as long as you have continues, you can keep going from where you died

minotalen275 days ago

I meant that score keeps going up even when I'm using the restart feature (which starts me again from the beginning of the stage with all continues).

hiromu656276 days ago

Awesome work on this. There's some very creative shmup design here.

moreno893317 days ago

Short and sweet shmup. I like it. Reminds me of BLAME! and zero ranger together.

Ethereal airport323 days ago

The atmosphere in this game is freaking awesome. Idk how to even describe it but I love it.

null painter323 days ago

Really beautiful and gives strong 'dept heaven' (Knights in the Nightmare) vibes. Seems like there are optional stages to the bosses, too?

HorribleDreams329 days ago(+1)

Cute game!

mesamunefire333 days ago(+1)

Awesome little game!

Gendgi334 days ago

Beautiful, already commented and rated!

Fusionnist335 days ago

Congrats on the entry! Lovely game!

adam pype335 days ago

hey!! really loving this game. it's a lot of fun and extremely polished. i haven't gotten far yet but I ran into a crash as soon as i killed the 2nd phase.

here was the output:

___________________________________________
############################################################################################
ERROR in action number 1
of  Step Event0 for object objReturnShot:
Unable to find instance for object index 108012
at gml_Object_objReturnShot_Step_0
############################################################################################
gml_Object_objReturnShot_Step_0 (line -1)

Crazy Arcade334 days ago

Hi! Liked your work. :)
Would like to know how do you monetize your games?
I am trying to monetize here on itch.io site, but not sure how do I do it, can you please tell me if there is any way to do it.
sorry that being a little cocky, but I am a situation that I am actually looking for some decent way to monetize some games so that can do game development full time. Thanks!

squp331 days ago(+2)

Ask somewhere else, this game is free

Omshinwa335 days ago (3 edits) (+1)

review/analysis:

background: i never really play shmup games, i have never finished a touhou, i played your game on browser on a Mac with keyboard only. I did 1 run with no continue.
First of all, awesome game wow, the amount of polish is insane (I'm really moved by the sound design in menus lol). It's really fun too while being challenging. I'm usually not that into difficult games but i feel like yours has a really 'FUN' curve.
I like the few choices the game gives you 'Should I kill the hands first?', or 'Should I kill the moon or the sun first?' (i ended just always killing the sun first and then building meter with the Moon).
The 'slow down' mechanic is probably too emphasized when really it's no big deal lol.

I don't think we need such a dark screen when the effect really is just your ship going slower (which is maybe why some comment wanted it to slow down bullets too, it's really a dramatic effect when in reality it's not lol)

Lots of designs choices I was skeptical at first, but after playing it I understood their points. Like for example, at the beginning of the game, I wouldnt even see the SPIN attack being launched because it automatically launches itself when you hold Z. So as a creator I thought "Wouldn't it have been better to have the player manually trigger it by pressing Z again? so you can see the big boom effect?".

But now I realize the game really was kinda designed with Auto fire in mind lol? (maybe that should be the default option? idk)

Frankly your game could work on 2 buttons (or even 1), Z could slow down the pilot while youre shooting instead and X is for triggering SPIN lol.
I thought at first the Spin was so weak, but now I understand more the philosophy of the game and see how you used it to design your bosses, and I think it's kinda busted now lol. Like you can just kill bosses in one Spin. Is that what you guys wanted? I almost never fought the beast guy phase of stage 4, because I was always going in with charged ready to kill it easily (also he seems like he has really low health for some reason?)

Maybe the damage could be scaled so it does more when you have few bullets charged and less when you have more charged? idk, even the tiniest change could really change the difficulty of some levels so that's kind of risky lol. Like the beginning of the game I had a hard time charging because there's relatively few bullets (which made me think maybe it's not worth trying to charge), but at the end it's charging so fast lol.

Also maybe remove the grazing when you're invincible from respawning? You can get meter by just going to where there's a big density of bullets while you're invincible. Maybe you could remove the meter that reset when you die to offset that? (i wonder if it's really necessary)
i like the shapes of the bullets matches their speed (round bullets are fast, lines are slower so you can go and graze them). and i like this purposeful design where slow bullet you try to farm them, but fast bullets you avoid them
the touhou level is a nice change of pace, i liked it less at first (because all the bullets are rounds, at first you dont understand why you cant graze black bullets, it felt like there were less opportunity to graze slow bullets). But it really does have it's own identity with it's own phases (like that moment where she shoots beams of black bullets and you can charge super fast, but you have to stay within the zone delimited, I think that's really cool how it's like a different little game).
you think you could put the Rebind in the option of the pause menu ingame? (at one point I was thinking of switching to a controller lol)

I would have liked to spend more time with the foetus maybe, I really liked at the end where everything gets faster and faster! But I didnt reach this phase enough (or I did but then I completed this phase without dying lol)

love the game!

Xenolusion335 days ago

fun but hard same satisfaction as undertale boses but better and love the art style

neodharma335 days ago

Wow, incredible! (and hard, but that's exactly what you want from this type of game). This is really special, great job.

OPLERO

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