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Japanese shoot-em-up (“shmup”) games are often notorious for being insanely difficult. In a world where shmups such as Ikaruga and Castle of Shikigami challenge the player to an extreme level of frustration, it’s refreshing to see Deathsmiles. While Deathsmiles is certainly no pushover, it offers hours of fun gameplay across various degrees of difficulty so that players of all skill levels can enjoy it.

Deathsmiles takes place in the fictional world of Gilverado. A group of young girls have been trapped inside this magical land for several years. Jitterbug, one of the girls’father, is obsessed with finding a way back to the real world, and in doing so, he’s accidentally opened the gates of hell! Demons are pouring into Gilverado, and it’s up to the girls to stop them.

Of course, if you’re playing this game, there’s a good chance you don’t really care about the story; you simply just want to blow stuff up. So let’s move onto the gameplay…

Deathsmiles allows you to choose from up to 5 characters, each of which have their own distinct bullet patterns, movement properties, and familiars. Your familiar is a small creature that follows you where you go and provides some extra firepower to help you out. All the characters seem fairly balanced, and they are all very playable, even for beginners.

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