This is the two hundred twelfth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our two hundred twelfth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is overloading our eyes with visual effects. It’s Rym 9000, by Sonoshee, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

Hyperkinetic shooter designed to make your eyes bleed

Look, it’s got a lot of visual effects, OK?

Rym 9000 is a shoot ’em up, a venerable genre that has come up a few times in this series. When writing about the first to appear, Zenodyne R, I indulged in a little history lesson about the genre’s origins and evolution, so I won’t repeat that here. The short version is: shoot ’em ups (or shmups for short) descended from classic arcade games like Space Invaders, adding more and more fancy graphics over the years while retaining an arcade-like ethos of stiff challenges and score chasing. Rym 9000 takes that “fancy graphics” thing to the extreme, endowing its pixel art with all manner of visual spectacle: flickering spritework explodes into colorful streaks across the screen, chromatic aberration and screen shake abound when enemies are destroyed, space warps in ripples and waves.

It’s a lot, but somehow never quite degenerates into overwhelming noise (with the possible exception of one of the later stages, which cranks up the psychedelic rainbow colors). It looks spectacular in motion, but is hard to capture in screenshots; I recommend heading to the game’s itch.io page to see some animated gifs. There are a lot of visual touches that I particularly appreciate. The player’s ship fires in bursts, but repeatedly tapping the fire button (no mashing required, relatively relaxed tapping will do) results in sustained fire. Sustain it long enough, and the colorful background starts to fade out, leaving a dark grid in its place. So in moments of intense battle, other distractions fade away and it’s just the player’s ship and the enemies (and the energy weapon blasts filling the screen). When calm returns, the background fades back in, so players can check out the scenery before the next onslaught.

Many of the cool-looking effects are tied to the mechanics of the game, too. The player’s ship can survive a single hit, but things change when it’s damaged: its position is highlighted with a crosshair, making it easier to dodge imcoming attacks, and its weapon switches to an extra-powerful forward-firing energy barrage that makes short work of most opposition. Survive long enough in this mode, and a health pickup wiil appear, returning the ship to its pristine state. Take another hit before grabbing that pickup, however, and players will have to start the stage over again. This turns out to be very forgiving, letting players recover from mistakes by giving them extra firepower, and particularly daring players might intentionally get hit and play in damaged mode to eliminate enemies faster.

That’s important for getting higher scores. Enemies are surrounded by bubble-like halos, which start off white but eventually turn yellow and then red. These indicate a score multiplier: destroy an enemy while its halo is white and be rewarded with a 3x score multiplier for the kill, while destroying an enemy with a yellow halo only nets a 2x multiplier, and a red halo nets the basic score. Thus, players are encouraged to destroy enemies quickly for the maximum score. It’s an interesting idea, but it meant I didn’t really register enemies as ships, or drones, or creatures, but just as colored bubbles. It does mean that enemies are easy to spot even if the screen is full of colors flashing and swooping and bleeding everywhere, and larger foes maintain a distinct appearance within their bubbles, but if you’re looking for cool enemy designs you may be disappointed by Rym 9000.

Instead, it’s everything else that’s cool. I don’t think I’ve adequately conveyed just how good Rym 9000 looks in motion. It sometimes seems like a piece of visual art that just happens to be an interactive game. But it works well as a game too, with smart sound design lending the ship’s weapon blasts weight (and an excellent lo-fi synth soundtrack from Roex that is a perfect accompaniment to the visual spectacle), nice little warning indicators before enemies appear from off-screen, and a pleasing rhythm to the action. Partway through each of the first four stages (out of five total), players are offered a choice between two powerups, each of which changes the ship’s primary weapon. These aren’t simply upgrades, however. For example, the first choice is between a more powerful forwad-firing energy barrage, or a split-fire weapon which shoots diagonally left and right, but not directly forwards. Initially, the forward-firing powerup seemed better, since it does high damage and is easier to understand. But later I started picking the spit-shot, because the ability to hit things that aren’t directly in front of the player’s ship is surprisingly useful. Especially once I reached the second stage.

Those powerups mean that the action feels noticeably different as the game progresses. Later on, I even nabbed one that fired powerful blasts directly left and right, which meant I had to maneuver alongside enemies to destroy them. The enemy patterns in the stages seem designed for the different behavior of these powerups, with threats appearing from the sides or from behind as well as straight ahead. Of course, players can always get hit to revert to the ultra-powerful forward firing weapon of the damaged ship when needed. And the game can be finished without any powerups; this is actually required in order to unlock one of the 50 lore entries that spell out the story behind Rym 9000. Others are unlocked for other achievement-like feats: defeat bosses without taking a hit, dispatch every enemy in certain waves, that kind of thing.

The lore entries are completely nuts. Every 1000 years there’s a “moon blink”, wherein a big eye appears on the moon and blinks for a few seconds. Usually this is accompanied shortly afterwards by a cataclysm on Earth. An immortal being called the Green Dweller tells of a treasure of unfathomable power — the titular Rym 9000 — on the moon, only reachable during a moon blink. There are oppressive world governments, scattered resistance movements, prominent families ruling the planet and/or traveling through deep space, warp tunnels in the Bermuda Triangle… just bizarre stuff all around. Players are ostensibly flying to the moon to obtain the Rym 9000, but even after unlocking a bunch of lore entries I’m not entirely sure who I was controlling, and what exactly their motivations were.

I do have some complaints about Rym 9000. For some reason it initially launches in a tiny window, which can only be remedied by accessing the options screen (right arrow key on the main menu) and changing the resolution scaling. During a run, players can resume from the start of the current stage if they die, but if they quit the game they’ll have to start over from the beginning next time. That’s made even worse by the occasional crash that froze the game and forced me to close it and relaunch. At one point I fought my way all the way to the fifth and final stage, only to have the game crash as I battled the final boss. I was eventually able to finish the game, but that one stung. Sonoshee seem to be aware of the crashing problem, since crashing the game unlocks one of the lore entries, but I’d rather they simply fixed it. Or at least let me resume my run after quitting.

Still, I really enjoyed Rym 9000 overall. So much, in fact, that I’m considering playing a bit more to try to unlock a few more lore entries. Despite the visual barrage, it’s not as tough as many shoot ’em ups (easier than Zenodyne R and even Risk System, for example), and I felt I was steadily improving at it, if not quite mastering it. And it looks and sounds really cool. If you have any interest in shoot ’em ups, and can stomach the occasional crash, I highly recommend checking it out. If you missed it in the bundle, Rym 9000 is sold for a minimum price of $5.99, including versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

That’s 212 down, and only 1529 to go!