Thanks to Intragames for the review copy!

Grand Brix Shooter is a challenging 2D side-scrolling shoot ‘em up that gets close to perfection in execution and manages to bring a few new ideas to the table. Everything from menus to fully rebind-able controls to core gameplay felt tight and smooth.

The story of Grand Brix Shooter is that you are a boy escaping from an alien planet while being under constant attack from alien ships. All you have to start off with is a puny spaceship equipped with a peashooter, but as you go on you can find several different upgradable ship types. Your goal is to get through a gauntlet of levels, each ending with a boss fight.

Throughout the game hundreds of enemies will be trying to shoot you down. You’ll be dodging a constant barrage of bullets while trying to survive and shoot back. The enemies had enough variety to stay fun but not a large enough assortment to consistently give you new things to learn. The boss fights at the end of each level are preset with no variety, so it becomes a memorization test. Run variety comes down to the patterns enemies spawn in and the ships you use to combat them.

The defining mechanics in Grand Brix Shooter are ship customization and upgrade features. To change your ship, you need to shoot open canisters, and these will give out a new ship type that you can swap to. There are 4 or 5 different ship types to change into ranging from one that uses drones to another that shoots a steady laser beam. After changing ship types you can level it up by shooting enemies. The health system is also built around swapping ships. To replenish health, you need to change to a different ship. The downside is that every time you change ships, you go back to level 1. It’s either keep the risk of using your high level damaged ship, or have maximum health and be reset to zero. This balancing act becomes complicated in later levels when enemies have more health, because going back to level 1 would make waves a lot harder to deal with.

Grand Brix Shooter is challenging. Most bullet patterns even in the easier difficulty are tight to maneuver around and fast moving. There are two difficulty options, so for those that want an even harder challenge can deal with a mode with even tighter bullet dodging. I sort of wish the easier mode could also be a bit more forgiving with health (since the health mechanic is the same in both difficulties). There’s two modes. Arcade which is the standard story mode, and a challenge mode meant for leaderboard-chasing. There is online leaderboards for both modes.

The game’s scathing issue is the art style. The enemy and ship designs are great and I like the 3D blocky look they have. In theory the backgrounds look nice but that’s where the issues lie. The backgrounds are bright and clash often with the colorful bullets that fill the screen. I had to pay very close attention to things during play because the background and bullets blend together too much to differentiate things without much effort.

Morally there are almost no issues to be found. You shoot enemy robotic ships with various sci-fi weaponry that use bright neon colors, and enemies shoot back with their own neon bullets. Online leaderboards are seen after every run ends so a bad username could come up if you’re placed near them.

Grand Brix Shooter is a game to keep your eye on. It feels great to play and has an interesting spaceship swapping mechanic. The art style hinders the game in a way that wouldn’t be easily fixed, but this seems to be the only issue the game has.