It seems April Fool’s Day is a day for shmups, as Idea Factory International has revealed that their April Fool’s joke, Neptunia Shooter (Nep Shooter in Japanese), is also the real deal.
In this game, Neptune finds herself stuck in an 8-bit space full of waves of enemies, with six worlds to fly through and friends-turned-bosses to recruit. Here’s the full info from IF International below:
About the Game
Armed to the teeth, players begin as Neptune in an unworldly 8-bit space dimension ravaged by creatures who burst endless waves of bullets. Shoot, dodge, and defeat the boss in six unique bullet-hell worlds. After defeating each boss, they will join your mission, allowing you to switch characters and utilize their unique shooting abilities. Neptune and her friends must traverse through this shmup space dimension and defeat the last boss once and for all!
Key Features
Shmup It Up – Progress through six 8-bit inspired shoot ‘em up stages as enemy dogoos spew out an array of bullet-hell attacks in this 8-bit dimension!
Who Will Claim Victory? – With Steam online leaderboards, bullet-hell fans everywhere can now stake the claim as the best Neptunia Shooter player in this dimension! Challenge your friends and see who gets the higher score in six different levels!
Choose Your Ammunition! – Start your shmup adventure as the self-proclaimed protagonist, Neptune! At the end of each level, you face off a Goddess boss, who joins your party after defeating them. Switch between five possible characters on-the-fly and utilize each of their unique bullet-hell patterns to defeat the evil space dogoos and the final boss!
Broadcast Your Skills – With the Steam Broadcasting feature, you can show off your shoot ‘em up and dodging skills to the whole world!
Check out screenshots below:
Something interesting is that the game is being developed by Idea Factory International internally, rather than just being a localization job. This might mean that we may see more IF International’s own titles in the future as well. This also means that this is the second Neptunia entry, after Super Neptunia RPG developed by Artisan Studios in Canada, to be made by a Western company.
Neptunia Shooter will release in 2019 on PC via Steam, and will support both English and Japanese. The Steam page will be available later.
