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”.
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.
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.
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.
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.