Yes, it’s not Cave Story 2 but Pixel’s latest release is an excellent action game anyway, and bursting with charm.
Daisuke Amaya (aka Pixel) got famous thanks to his excellent freeware Metroid-like Cave Story. He rightfully “sold out” to Nicalis, as he deserves to get paid for the quality of that work. Since then he’s mostly returned to tooling around with prototypes and audio editing programs, except for this collaboration with Kiyoko Kawanaka in 2014. It regenerated from the putative “Gero Blaster”, in the process becoming a fun, lightly satirical take on Japanese office culture, particularly with the “Zangyou” (overtime) mode added post-release.
I guess you’d call Kero Blaster a run-n-gun: your nameless frog character, a salaryman at Cat & Frog, Inc., platforms through linear—but interesting—stages while blasting anything that moves. There’s new guns and a double-jump jetpack to unlock, and a shop to boost your health and weapon power (like Cave Story, the weapon upgrades are awesome and satisfying). And that’s it! It’s relatively simple and short but well-made and with cute chunky pixel graphics and a nice soundtrack, as expected.
Originally made for touchscreen devices, the controls are simple. But if you want to make it through the harder stages and especially the post-game campaign, I’d recommend a controller. Speaking of Zangyou mode, not only does it remix all the stages, but it adds new enemies, much tougher platforming challenges, a whole new story, and a new final level and boss, significantly extending the life of the base game. My biggest regret is that the two-part demo Pink Hour & Pink Heaven aren’t included in the console release, so you’ll have to seek them out (for free!) on Steam for Windows or on iOS.
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