At last, we found loyal disciples of Megaman and Gradius. Studio Daeera the game designer, and Firespike33 the game's musical composer were clearly inspired by the NES action games in the 1980s. Coma State Eden is an arcade shooter that plays like the scrolling shooters similar to the 1980's Konami games Gradius and Lifeforce. The music has a pumped-up retro action feeling that sounds easily like Megaman stages.



Pew pew! Take that you floating eyeballs!

Coma State Eden is a scrolling shooter game where you collect tiered powerups and fight different enemy types. Each stage has waves of enemies, a mid-boss, and an end stage boss. You play a dream fighter, or a bug named Burai, that enters peoples dreams to cure people of their comas by defeating the enemies that inhabit their subconscious. This game can be played solo or can have a second player in the stages with you. This game right from the get-go is a challenging game just like the old arcade games. Enemies appear on all 4 sides of the screen, you die in three hits, enemies want to kill you in groups, and other enemies have shields, homing attacks or are incredibly fast. You can defend yourself with 3 different attacks: a straightforward laser, a boomerang attack for enemies higher than you, and bombs to drop for enemies lower than you. The game stage progression follows the rules of introducing 1 enemy type at a time and then you are eventually given more of that enemy type, or you have to fight the various enemies together in the stage. Each of the weapon types have 3 levels of power when you collect upgrades and even a 4th level if you fill an energy gauge and release it for maximum power. Be careful because if you get hit, you don't lose your life, you first lose all of your powerups. This game is very unforgiving if you get hit, so you must master the controls or you could adjust the difficulty level which is good for new and veteran players.



You are a crazy killer boss and you won't touch me. Your weakness is the eye, right?

The main innovation of the game is the dual stick control. If you have a dual stick controller, the left joystick moves the character, and the right joystick fires your attacks. You do not use buttons to play the main game. Firing left and right can simply be toggled by moving the attack joystick left and right which is important to managing enemy attacks from all sides of the screen. One of my favorite concepts about going to an arcade is the ability to play a game in a different play style you would normally never play at home. This game uses a non-traditional gameplay style I could easily see in an arcade with 4 joysticks on an arcade cabinet (2 sticks for each player.) If you are confused on how to play this gameplay style, the how-to-play section allows you to play with the controls without any distractions. The tutorial and dual stick gameplay make perfect sense together.

Here are some things I would like to see in the game's final build. First, I want the shield deflector to be easier to use. The deflecting feature is important if you want to quickly build your max gauge skill to fire your max attack. The big downside is that the deflect range is very short, and if you get hit, you lose all of your powerups, lose your shield which can be recovered via finding a power up capsule (which I think should be removed feature or damage the shield for 10 seconds) or you lose a unit of life which makes deflecting too risky. If the range and length of deflecting use was slightly increased, deflection will make more sense as a form of defense, especially in the later stages. Another minor gameplay complaint is in the Co-op experience. You can push the other player without the character showing that they are pushing each other (I thought I was experiencing a control config glitch at first.) I say that you remove the player-to-player collision or show the slowed collided movement as the two players push each other. Option 1 is the easier choice.

The second major issue are the background maps compared the pixelated characters. The background has thin pixels whereas the moving characters have thick pixels which clearly do not match well. Studio Daeera is very experienced at pixel artwork in his previous games like Sin Tax and Now you Made me Crabby, so the art changes can easily be updated by the designer.

The game's intent is to make you feel like you are playing an old 1980's arcade game, and it worked. The game is action packed with the full features of an arcade interface, the dual sticks let you play fast, and you can play this game with a 2nd player. Firespike33, the game's composer, did a good job emulating a song style of Megaman and similar NES action games which is suitable for a pixelated action shooter. This game can be presented as a cabinet at a local arcade.



Psychedelic! I feel like I'm in Space Harrier while I'm fighting a Windows logo monster. Evil eyeball alien in a die, you are next!