I didn’t expect one of the most challenging games I’ve played all year to be so gosh-darned cute, but that was the case when I played Vertex Pop’s Graceful Explosion Machine (GEM). The brightly colored side-scrolling shooter made some waves when it released on Nintendo Switch earlier this year, so I was familiar with the game on a base level before I started. After just a few levels I realized that GEM wasn’t like much of the genre, and it offered up some pretty refreshing tweaks to the formula.
The biggest change is that the side-scrolling environment loops around. This means instead of piloting through a level and dealing with strategically placed enemies, I was tasked with eliminating all of the on-screen foes that would randomly teleport into the stage. It took me sometime to get used to, especially using a button in order to flip the direction that the spaceship was headed in, but eventually I was pulling off some nifty evasions to keep my ship in one piece. I eventually found that staying on the move was a good strategy, as it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the dozens of enemies that are on-screen at any given time. There are some ways to deal with sticky situations, though, as my ship was equipped with three bonus weapons on top of a speed burst that helped get me away from an area quickly. There’s a helpful missile attack that takes care of a few enemies at once, a sword that circles around the ship, and a laser-beam that can ...