Drainus

Not Without My Drainus

I don’t feel all that qualified to assess Drainus. I really like a good shoot-’em-up, and have lots of respect and nostalgia for the genre, but I’m actually shockingly bad at them. Whether I was begging my parents for change just to instantly get shot down on the 1942 arcade machine they had at a local pub, or never getting past the first level on the likes of Hellfire and Thunderforce II on the Mega Drive, I don’t exactly have the skill-set to excel at anything resembling “bullet hell”.

Drainus is fucking cool, though. I mean, don’t get me wrong, that title obviously doesn’t come across very well to a native English speaker, but everything else about the game is about as close to perfect as a shoot-’em-up can get.

In Drainus, which was initially released in 2022 and developed by Team Ladybug (who also developed one of my game diary subjects, Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth), players take on the role of Irina, a young lady with a strong sense of justice and a haircut that made me think she was a boy. She’s an excellent pilot, and she’s been hiding out from an evil space empire while trying to find a cure for her extremely sick “daddy”.

It’s probably not hardcore enough to be called Bullet Hell by real genre aficionados. Bullet Heck, maybe?

She’s accompanied by a time-travelling “humanoid” pilot called Ghenie, who looks like something in between Slippy Toad and the drummer from Interstella 5555, and between the two of them they have to fight through the Kharlal Empire’s humongous fleet of deadly weaponry, tie up nasty time paradoxes, and deal with Irina’s sister, Layla, who happens to be second-in-command of the Empire’s forces (and yes, even though she’s clearly older and more together, she refers to their dad as “daddy”, too).

Luckily, thanks to Ghenie, Irina has found herself in the pilot seat of a “Drainus”, an advanced experimental craft that can adsorb energy from light-based weapons and unleash it upon the enemy in the form of a powerful homing attack. This ability, on top of presumably being responsible for the game’s unfortunate title, provides Drainus‘ unique twist – a mechanic that allows players to absorb certain types of attack in a similar vein to Ikaruga, and also to take the offensive in interesting ways.

The beam absorption mechanic in action.

This results in gameplay that encourages a daring play-style. In order to get the upper hand against the swarms of basic enemies, challenging mini-bosses and overwhelming stage bosses, players will have to suck up otherwise devastating beam attacks and unleash them at the right time, taking chunks out of the health bars of hard-to-reach enemies.

There’s also a question of timing, as you can’t just fly your Drainus around without a care in the world, sucking up all of the enemy projectiles willy-nilly. Hold down the button for too long and the ship’s energy absorbing apparatus will fail, leaving you vulnerable while it charges up again. Also, you can’t suck up physical projectiles (handily highlighted with a red outline), so constant vigilance is required.

Throughout the game, players will be collecting power that can be spent at any time in the game’s menu to upgrade their ride’s weapons and other systems, meaning that there’s plenty of different ways to customise your gameplay. You can even upgrade your energy absorption bar, meaning you’ll be able to hold down the button and tank that super-boss’ screen-filling beam weapon for even longer. It’ll make you feel powerful, but you’ll need all that power to take on the rapidly-escalating threat of the legions of bosses, synchronised enemy fleets, and stage obstacles that the game will throw at you.

I actually found myself fairly interested in the story, too, and was invested in how Irina and Layla’s relationship would develop. There’s even a bit of a fake-out ending, and the game handles its time-travel story in a way that keeps things interesting until the very end. That’s coming from someone who has a major aversion to time-travel stories outside the first two Terminator flicks.

Another possible explanation for the game’s unattractive name is that the developers might have wanted it to sound a bit like Darius or Gradius.

The game also lets you continue as much as you want, even saving your progress through a level when you pick it up and try again, and this is the only reason I was capable of finishing the campaign. I got shot down my fair share of times, but I still felt like some kind of badass, bullet hell pro when I saw those credits roll, and I came back for more, too. There are also unlockable difficulty levels and an arcade mode for those looking to prove themselves in the pilot’s seat.

On top of all of its accoutrements and imaginative gameplay elements, though, Drainus manages to do the basic stuff perfectly. The game looks fantastic, the controls are crisp and poised to perfection (the whole thing looks and plays superbly using the Switch’s handheld mode), and the music is toe-tapping throughout.

My favourite power-ups are the ones that attach a formation of blaster-equipped pods to your ship.

I imported the physical Switch version of Drainus based on the fact that I wanted a nice shoot-’em-up on the console and that I’d heard some good things here and there. I’m really glad I did, as Drainus has proven to be yet another prize specimen indie title in my physical Switch collection. With this and Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth in the bag, Team Ladybug are now two for two on exemplary games that get an emphatic thumbs up from me.

Wait, are Team Ladybug the new Treasure? Drainus certainly feels like a 2D classic in the vein of Treasure’s legendary output, but maybe it’s a little hasty to compare the two just yet. I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on what the ladybugs get up to in the future, though. When they’re not sitting around on leaves eating aphids, that is.

Tumblepop

A Tumble in the Jungle

As a small child with a wide-eyed interest in the natural world, I embarked on one or two trips to a place called the Tropiqaria in West Somerset. It was (and still is) a small tropical house and zoo built in and around an old BBC radio transmitter. I have two memories from visiting the Tropiquaria; one school trip during which I held a snake around my neck (they’re dry, not slimy!) and one trip with my parents where I sank a few coins into the single arcade machine that stood near the snack bar.

Over the following thirty years I would think about this game every now and then, surrounded by snakes, lizards and tropical flora as it was, but could never remember the name. It was a single-screen platformer along the lines of Bomb Jack but with a bit of a Ghostbusters vibe; the characters had vacuum guns with packs on their backs, and you’d suck up enemies into your pack and then fire them at other enemies. It was bright and colourful and whimsical, and something about it burrowed into the back of my mind and found a permanent home there.

Incredibly, by using the modern art of “Googling it” I have managed to identify this mysterious game from my youth, so I’d like to bring your attention to Tumblepop, released in 1991 and developed by Data East. Tumblepop is an arcade platformer for up to two players starring a pair of ghost hunters who travel the world, sucking up spooks and blasting them into their allies. The machine was published by Namco in Japan, a company called Leprechaun Inc. in the US, and a company called Mitchell Corporation in Europe. Despite sounding very English, the Mitchell Corporation was apparently a Japanese developer and publisher, and somehow delivered a Tumblepop cabinet to a random exhibition of tropical animals in the depths of the English West Country. Strange how things work out, isn’t it?

The Japanese stages take place during sunset, just like in Road Rash 3. Wait, it’s probably sunrise, come to think of it.

Thanks to the modern gift of emulation, I spent some time today playing Tumblepop on my desktop PC using a USB Nintendo Switch controller, and I have to say I had a pretty good experience with it, despite there being very few lizards nearby. The game definitely has an air of Bomb Jack about it, with its single-screen layouts and backgrounds featuring world landmarks, but the rainbow-hued suction beams of the magic vacuum guns add a whole extra dimension to the gameplay.

After selecting the nation they’d like to save from a simple world map, players will battle through a number of stages, slurping up a variety of enemies as they work their way towards a boss battle. The gameplay is simple and satisfying, and it’s not as tricky as a lot of arcade platformers, but it’s still easy to get caught out with so many enemies packed into the single-screen areas that are capable of attacking from above and below. As you progress through the stages, projectile-spewing baddies will begin to appear, as well as baddie-producing generator-type enemies that take a couple of hits to remove.

Each location has a boss waiting at the end of it, and the bosses tend to dominate the screen and represent an interesting change of pace. Despite each boss encounter having its own simple gimmick they all have the same solution; suck up their minions and empty the tank right in their enormous, ugly faces. Oh, don’t hold the suck button down for too long though, or your guy’s backpack will explode and you’ll lose a life. It’s a tragic and shameful way for a ghost hunter to go out.

Remember when that giant octopus terrorised New York? Yeah that was crazy.

As far as I can tell, Tumblepop was never ported out of the arcade with the single exception of a Game Boy version that was later released for the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console, meaning that outside of emulation there’s no way of playing Tumblepop in full, living colour – unless you want to track down what must now be an exceptionally rare and obscure arcade machine, that is. I wonder if the Tropiquaria still has theirs? Maybe I’ll go over there soon and check it out. Worst-case scenario; I get to see some turtles.

Devilish – Retro Review

Bounce Your Balls Through Spooky Halls

If there’s one thing that Atari’s block-bashing 1976 arcade hit, Breakout, needed to make it a little bit more eye-catching, it was a sinister sprinkling of ghosts, ghouls, demons, and other monstrosities. Japanese software developer, Genki, thought so anyway, and came up with Devilish for the Game Gear, an unholy take on the paddle-based, ball bouncing, Breakout formula.

Before we get into the gameplay, though, let’s take a look at exactly why a pair of elegant-looking paddles are bopping a mystical ball around a selection of menacing locations. The legend goes that a prince and a princess were in love, and a jealous demon turned them into a pair of stone paddles. That’s the first thing the demon thought of, apparently. Not frogs. Not statues. Paddles.

The boss fights take place against a plain, black background – as was the tradition at the time.

Unfortunately for said demon, a mystical and mysterious ball came into existence that the paddle-prince and paddle-princess could use to absolutely batter the demon’s minions and fortifications, Odama-style. This all results in a pair of stony sovereigns bashing a beautiful blue ball into blocks, bricks, bad guys and boogeymen, all in the name of love.

The game takes place across six scrolling stages, with players able to select from a number of paddle configurations and move the top paddle higher or lower into the screen. The aim is to reach the end of the stage within a strict time limit, with points awarded for blocks broken and monsters flattened.

It’s a fun idea and a nice, occult take on the Breakout formula which is ideal for handheld gaming. It can occasionally feel frustrating, with the bouncing physics often hard to predict, and certain enemies and obstacles seemingly designed to get under your skin with their time-wasting bullshit, but when you get it right and bust through vast sections of a stage with ease, it can feel pretty satisfying.

The guy in the hat makes the other zombies dance. It’s probably referencing some obscure ’90s thing…

The time limits for each stage are very tight, and with only six stages and many sub-two minute target times, a full play through of this demonic adventure will take you less than a quarter of an hour, once you’ve mastered the gameplay, that is.

Short life-span aside, Devilsh is an entertaining Breakout clone with a liberal dose of blasphemous imagery mixed in for good measure, and high score-chasers will have a rollicking time flinging their paddles about with righteous, ball-blasting fury. Be a bit careful with them, though. They’re royalty, remember.

Sinister Sequel

If roughly fifteen minutes of demonic paddle-spanking isn’t enough for you, there is more to be found out there if you’re willing to enter the shadowy realms of importing, console modding, or emulation. Known as Bad Omen in Japan and Devilish: The Next Possession in America, this fiendish follow-up was developed by Aisystem Tokyo, and reuses the plot and gameplay of the original, sprucing up the visuals, adding multiplayer, and drawing out the length a bit.

It’s more of the same but bigger and better (and with a pretty badass front cover, too), but us here in Europe were deemed unworthy, and the pair of monarchical paddles never landed on our fair shores. Not releasing the cool, fiendish sequel in Europe? That’s a paddlin’.

The 16-bit sequel is even more metal.

This article was written for a now-defunct Sega magazine and never used. Played on Game Gear via emulation.

Prodeus

Become a Vessel of Destruction

Despite not being a “boomer” (I’m D-Generation X, baby), I’m quite fond of Boomer Shooters. Anything that reminds me of simpler times blasting away on the likes of Duke Nukem 3D and Hexen on my Sega Saturn is going to have a decent shot at earning my affections. Also, I like that they don’t tend to be too much of a time commitment, and can make for a straightforward and violent palette cleanser between lengthy RPGs or modern cinematic action games that demand lots of hours and dedication.

These days, I tend to try to be a physical-only gamer, as I enjoy feeding the shelves in the rumpus room almost as much as I enjoy playing a good video game, and in the last few years I’ve finished the (as far as I’m aware) only three Boomer Shooters that you can buy physically for the Nintendo Switch: Ion Fury, Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, and now, finally, Prodeus.

You’ll be mowing down so many minions of Chaos you’ll think you were playing Space Marine 2! (I completed that, too, by the way) 

I didn’t write about the first two games so I’ll very briefly sum up my opinions on them here. Ion Fury is a fantastic Duke Nukem 3D love-letter that has been tastefully modernised in all the right places, and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun is a satisfying blast through the endless minions of Nurgle and Tzeentch that often pushes Nintendo’s ageing HDMI-enabled tablet beyond breaking point when it comes to framerate.

That leaves Prodeus, which I purchased sometime in 2024 and finally got around to playing in January of 2025. The game was developed by Bounding Box Software and was the result of a successful Kickstarter campaign. It offers multiplayer content as well as a single player mode, but I don’t dabble with multiplayer these days. I like my peace and quiet, you know? This will be a review of the campaign only.

The plot of Prodeus is purposefully left fairly ambiguous. From what I can fathom from the pre-stage descriptions, the game takes place on an asteroid that’s being mined for fuel (and possibly artefacts) and two opposing, interdimensional forces have converged on said asteroid to enact some kind of cosmic war. These two forces are Chaos, who have a demonic vibe and can apparently turn human soldiers into Doom-style zombies, and Prodeus, who are technologically advanced entities of light who can wrest control of Chaos’ demonic units, turning them into upgraded, blue-tinted versions of themselves.

As for the protagonist? Well, it’s hard to tell. There’s an opening sequence where they get killed horribly and then awoken in some kind of tank, and in-game text occasionally refers to them as a “Vessel”, but that’s about all you’ve got to go on. The Doom-style portrait at the bottom of the screen (that appears more skull-like as you take damage), has a cybernetically-enhanced super-soldier aesthetic, so maybe they’re some kind of Prodeus experiment that went rogue, but it’s all a bit vague. The setting is compelling enough, though, and you won’t be thinking too hard about the nuances of character development when you’re blasting something’s face off with four concurrent super shotgun shells.

Which one is the Keymaster and which one is the Gatekeeper?

All of the guns in Prodeus are great, and the game starts you off simple with a very satisfying pistol. All of the usable weapons are split across five different types of ammo, and each ammo type will feed every weapon in that class. These are bullets, shells, rockets, energy and chaos, and the different guns in the various classes all do a fine job of staying relevant as you unlock new implements of destruction. Even weapons that you’d think would be very similar or just straight upgrades, like the shotgun and the super shotgun, are different enough to drastically change gameplay. The shotgun fires more shells before needing to reload and has a secondary mode that’s a bit more effective at range, while the super shotgun can fire all four loaded shells in a satisfying blast that’ll leave all but the most elite enemy types with a severe case of bloody dismemberment.

Speaking of which, the blood effects are on point, too, with enemies exploding very satisfyingly and painting floors and walls in a tasteful shade of crimson. If a baddie pops in a tight enough space its insides will even cover the ceiling, and this results in a generous period of dripping gore, giving the game a very violent and visceral air.

Even when they’re not covered in copious helpings of tomato sauce, Prodeus’ environments look great. The visuals are purposefully very pixelated (although it looks less so in motion than the screenshots would have you believe), but the game still has a sleek feel with heaps of atmosphere. Many of the locations are quite alien and abstract, especially once you enter the Prodeus dimension, and the whole thing is built on a very dark base colour scheme with orange or blue highlights depending on whether Prodeus or Chaos are in the ascendancy at that point in the campaign. The game could be accused of looking quite samey, but a couple of highlights, like the Space Station or the dark, rainy ocean environment in the Trench level, do manage to provide some memorable focal points along the way.

As for the gameplay; it’s extremely solid. The controls are crisp and responsive, I only noticed two sections where the framerate took a noticeable hit, and the enemy variety keeps things interesting right through to the end of the game, in part thanks to the more-powerful Prodeus-controlled versions of Chaos enemies that appear later on. While most levels consist of moving through environments, locating the odd key card, and taking out groups of enemies as you go, some stages are straight up arenas that throw enemy waves of ascending difficulty at you, just to keep things spicy. The aforementioned key card hunting doesn’t overstay its welcome either, and serves as a nice throwback to similar mechanics in the games Prodeus is so clearly influenced by.

The Prodeus campaign is a dark and dismal, viscera-soaked treat for fans of old-school FPS action, and the “boomer shooter” style gameplay is spot on. There are plenty of difficulty levels to dabble with, depending on whether you want to barely survive each encounter as a wounded, bloody wreck, or feel like an invincible god-warrior who effortlessly leaves a gory wake of destruction in their path. The locations are grimy, intimidating, and occasionally awe-inspiring, and the music, while not necessarily all that memorable, provides a fine accompaniment to the flying bullets, plasma, and Chaos energy.

The environments get quite a bit more ominous as you progress.

Where would I rate it alongside Ion Fury and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun, you ask? Well, that’s a tough one. For thrills and personality, I’d rank it just below Ion Fury, but then, Duke Nukem 3D was the shooter I jammed with the most when I was but an eager young gamer. I’d probably say Prodeus plays a little better than Boltgun, though, just feeling that little bit crisper and clearer, although the fact that I played both games on the Switch could be affecting that decision.

Still, they’re all winners in my eyes, and that’s the important thing. Now I’m just waiting for that perfect modern re-imagining of Hexen to come out physically on the Switch. I heard Graven turned out to be a bit of a let-down though. Shame, that.