This bullet hell shooter mixes retro and modern in all the right ways

is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme. Star of Providence is like a retro game I would have loved as a kid. But the roguelike bullet hell shooter is also a modern twin-stick shooter, and the melding of the two eras results in a fun, fast, and challenging experience. In Star, you control a ship and explore randomly generated dungeons. As you navigate room by room — similar to an old-school Legend of Zelda game — you’ll pick up powerful weapons to fight the many enemies you’ll stumble across in your dungeon crawling. The weapons are a delight, filling your screen with bullets and lasers. Sometimes, you’ll get cool effects like the ability for your bullets to phase through one side of the screen and appear on the other. But enemies can also spew out huge amounts of bullets, and that means many rooms turn into chaos as you weave through attack patterns to line up a perfect shot. The game’s narrow aspect rat ... Read full article.