RROOTAGE MODES PC
RROOTAGE MODES PLUS

It’s all very well knowing that most modern shooters feature a ship sprite with a hitbox that is smaller than the complete sprite, but rRootage makes that super-explicit. The game’s deliberately abstract visual style is also designed to help you understand what is going on, too. Since there are so many stages - 160 in all across the four modes, each with five bosses who have at least two phases each - the game has a very gradual incline in difficulty, and you’ll find it’s a great way to build up your confidence bit by bit. In the early stages, these can look daunting but move slowly enough to be manageable in the later levels of the game, meanwhile, they’re designed to put even bullet hell veterans through their paces. Regardless of which mode you’re playing, the boss will be constantly pelting you with bullet patterns of varying complexity. And in “GW” mode, drawing inspiration from Giga Wing, a meter gradually fills and, when filled, can be used to summon a short-lived reflector shield to fire bullets back at the boss. In “Ika” mode, inspired by Ikaruga, the subweapon button allows you to switch your ship’s colour and absorb matching bullets to fire them back at the boss. In the “Psy” mode, which is inspired by Psyvariar, your subweapon slows you down but rewards you for grazing bullets. In the “normal” game mode, your main subweapon is a limited stock of bombs, which create a circular blast which cancels bullets. The laser gets more powerful the closer you are to the boss, encouraging you to take more risks for greater rewards, and the subweapons vary considerably from mode to mode. You’re armed with a laser that fires the length of the screen and, depending on the game mode you’re playing, there may also be a subweapon available for use, too. Each boss typically has two distinct phases, with the second occurring when you whittle its health down to a particular level, clearly indicated on its health bar. So what of rRootage itself, then? Well, it’s a very simple game at heart: in each stage, all you need to do is defeat a boss five times in succession. There have been a few successes, though notably Wii title Blast Works, which allows you to effectively create your own shoot ’em ups, features a selection of Cho’s games as bonus content. This is especially apparent in rRootage, for reasons that we’ll discuss in a moment.Ĭho’s games haven’t seen many conversions to console over the years because he believes most of them are too simple to be commercially successful that and his tendency to program in a language called D (as opposed to the more common variants of C) makes them difficult to port. That means it’s heavily stylised and not intended to be an attempt to recreate that arcade experience exactly - rather, it makes use of modern high-definition 3D graphics to emulate the look and feel of classic vector graphics displays from the 1980s, and consequently has a rather abstract aesthetic.Ĭho cites the classic Rez as a heavy inspiration on his graphic style, which will doubtless be obvious to anyone who sees it, but he also claims to have drawn inspiration from street billboards and influential titles in the shoot ’em up genre such as Radiant Silvergun, Ikaruga and Gradius V. Like most of Cho’s other games, which were originally released as open-source, rRootage is intended to be an avant-garde homage to old-school arcade shoot ’em ups.

RROOTAGE MODES PC

It was originally released for PC by creator Kenta Cho, known variously as Saba and ABA Games, and also enjoyed an excellent port to iOS devices back in the days when mobile games didn’t suck endless free-to-play gacha ass. RRootage has actually been around in one form or another since 2003.

RROOTAGE MODES PLUS

And thus it’s a worthwhile investment - plus a damn fine game in its own right, of course. RRootage Reloaded, out now for Nintendo Switch, isn’t specifically marketed as a sort of “training tool” or anything like that - but its very design will help you improve your game considerably, particularly when it comes to “bullet hell” titles.