Rating:

A breathtakingly beautiful shooter game that is also a blast to play. However, the gorgeous eye candy did take some liberties with many core shooter traditions that we have grown to love, making the experience of playing this title a bittersweet one.

Additional Info

Full Review

Nimbus Sky Princess is an action-packed shooter developed by Kyron Ramsey for the 5th Yoyogames game design competition, in which the game beat more than 500 entries to take 3rd place, and rightfully so. The game puts the player in the shoes of a stubborn princess, Nimbus, who steals an airship from her father to rescue a captured prince. She is assisted by the court mechanic, who aids her by giving her (the player) instructions on how to pilot the ship and use its many weapons.

As usual, we'll start by looking at the good bits of this title. The gameplay is simple, straightforward shooter stuff that we all know and love - you press spacebar to fire your main weapon and hold spacebar to charge-up for a more powerful attack. What really impressed me are the enemy designs and dying in this game (yes, you heard it right).

If you are used to enemy projectiles going in straight lines or following a strict geometrical pattern towards you, get ready for a surprise - the projectiles in this game remind me a lot of Metal Slug, where enemy fire hail upon you in parabolic arcs or attempt to track your position, making it a challenge to predict and evade.

Dying in this game is also very innovative. There are no lives per se in this title, every time your health goes down to zero, you play a little button pressing mini-game where you need to press the directional keys appearing on screen in sequence to be able to continue playing. As you die more often, the number of keys and the speed at which you need to hit them increases, making it additionally difficult to "stay alive".

Gameplay aside, the graphics are gorgeous. They are drawn in pixel art of exceptional quality with a immaculate attention to detail - moving up and down the screen tilts your craft to a side and the reflection of the sun on the glass of the cockpit shifts to acknowledge that change in angle. This level of animation craftsmanship is augmented by brilliant aircraft designs and a lush parallax scrolling background. The game is a true visual treat.

However, there are many flaws that scar this otherwise outstanding piece. The size of the sprites and projectiles are simply too large for the tiny resolution (480 x 272), resulting in the movements of the craft feeling very clumsy and the enjoyment of weaving through bullet hell to be greatly hindered and unnecessarily difficult. A second problem I encountered during play was the visual confusion between debris and projectiles - many a time I waltzed right into a projectile thinking it was just harmless debris from a fallen foe, especially if it was fired just before its firer's demise.

Other than these two problems, I had a lot of fun playing the game. I wasn't very good at it, and couldn't even beat the first boss (but I was close after a few tries), guess my fingers aren't as good as they once were. If you think you might fare better with your nimble digits, why not prove it by downloading the game here?