I wish I found out about this sooner but Jamestown is an awesome indie shmup and an excellent lunch-time gameplay experience. I actually bought the game some time ago during one of the Humble Bundle events, but left it idle in my Steam account until recently. It turned out that the retro-graphics and the bullet hell gameplay are pretty much up my alley.
I would go as far as to say that this is one of the best shmups I’ve experienced on a PC since Tyrian and Raptor: Call of the Shadows. The backstory is a quirky one as well, set in 17th century colonial Mars (yup, somewhere out there a fictional alternate universe laughs at our backwater-ness) with players fighting through waves of Spaniards and Martians.
Levels are unlocked as you progress, some needing you to complete prior levels at higher difficulty levels before proceeding. This is crazy fun as the A.I and the bullet hell effect it employs simply sucks you in. The ships that you are using have two fire modes and a special vaunt mode which absorbs enemy fire and awards score multipliers when in effect.
Jamestown’s other claim to fame would be its multiplayer mode whereby players can choose between using the keyboard, mouse or two Xbox controllers to combine forces to up to four players on the same machine! Yup, who needs multiplayer over Ethernet/Internet while you can have a get together in this manner.
I came away from the entire experience utterly impressed and I’m gonna check out the rest of the Humble Bundle games that I’ve bought. In the mean time, Jamestown gets a 4.5 out of 5! Highly Recommended. The game is available on Steam for USD 9.99, check it out over here: https://www.finalformgames.com/jamestown/
