Developed by Abraham Morales
Released for XBLIG (12/2010)
Vorpal is a vertical top-down bullet hell shmup released on the XBLIG marketplace in 2010. The following is a quick look at the trial version. In the trial, you are given access to the story mode. You will immediately notice there is a giant crop on either side of the screen in order to simulate the old-school arcade vertical monitors. Unfortunately there is no option to rotate the image to take up more screen real estate. Upon starting story mode, there are six pilots to choose from, though you can only select one of them in the trial mode. Rather than your traditional stages in these types of games where the screen slowly scrolls, Vorpal is presented as a one-on-one battle. These are akin to your boss battles in shmups and these will be some long, grueling battles.
The graphics in Vorpal are very basic and everything shares the black, white and red color palette. The ship designs aren't bad, but they have no animation as they move about. If you need bright colorful graphics in your games, then Vorpal is probably not going to cut it for you. It works well enough for what the title is doing and the portraits of the characters at the select screen are very nice. The soundtrack features techno-style music that is standard in shmups and it complements the action well. The enemy bullets are big and stand out, which is important when there are so many of them coming at you!
Vorpal is a very tough game and will take a high level of patience and persistence to proceed past even the first boss. You do have a button to slow your ship down for precision maneuvering and there is a meter you can build up to gain a temporary firepower boost. There will also occasionally be some fodder enemies that when blasted drop power-ups which will be absolutely necessary for your survival. There's also an interesting feature where the game has a bar at the bottom of the screen indicating where the boss is, making lining up your shots while dodging bullets a bit more manageable. I thought Vorpal was a pretty good shooter, despite the fact that it handed my ass to me several times. It's definitely one I'm considering purchasing the full game as it's only $1 (at the time of this writing still available). It's also worth noting that the full version also contains a versus mode where you can select your opponent to practice against.
Related Links:
Vorpal - GameFAQs
Vorpal Review by CGR Undertow - YouTube
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