The shoot-'em-up comes in two different flavors. There's the twin-stick shooter, which affords you a complete range of fire but sticks you in a restricted space to allow you to focus more on the multitudes of enemies. Then there's the bullet hell shooter, which places you in either a horizontally or vertically scrolling plane while asking you to dodge curtains of enemy fire. Roche Fusion decided to merge the single-screen arenas of the twin-stick shooter with the relative mayhem of a vertical bullet hell shooter — all while throwing in some of developer Amulware's own touches here and there. The result is a solid shooting game experience.

You start by picking your ship, which seems odd since you only have one craft in the beginning, but you can unlock more along the way. Going either solo or with an offline friend, you start going through wave after wave of enemies, with each wave randomized due to procedural generation. Completing a wave takes you to an upgrade station, where you can choose one of three available, again randomly chosen from a wide swath of abilities. You keep repeating the process until you run out of all three lives. Once that happens, you're shown leaderboards for your specific difficulty and craft, both on a global scale and among all of your friends.

The procedural generation of each wave means you'll see a variety of enemies, all of which have completely different attack patterns. Some of the smaller organisms scroll from the top of the screen to the bottom in small clusters or waves. Other organisms do so at a faster pace but also follow the player across the board until they're destroyed. Some of the smaller ships move in patterns and fire volleys of shots in small patterns. Others fire missiles that go wide before they home in on a specific area. There are larger ships that fire sustained laser blasts that stay in one spot before disappearing or curve around in groups. Then you've got the more formidable ones, like the spiders that fire bullets in large waves or exploding star patterns, green beings that fire bombs, and bosses that send out probes that fire forward or have hordes of disposable beings as backup.

You aren't exactly powerless. Though you can only shoot forward by default, you have amazing maneuverability and speed, so you can easily dodge lots of shots without feeling like you're moving too quickly to control. On the defensive side, you may only have three lives at your disposal, but you have a regenerative health bar — though most enemy shots take you out in two hits anyway. Your ship also obeys the rules of those in bullet hell shooters, so only the ship's heart takes damage while projectiles pass through the other parts. Your power-ups include repulsion shields, nanobots that damage nearby enemies, and a rainbow wave that damages anyone who passes by. Offensively, you'll get a myriad of power-ups, including spinning lasers, a boomerang shot, and a large missile burst, all of which are infinite in supply but restricted via cool-down timers. In all, you can acquire roughly 30 different abilities throughout the game.

Aside from all of this, there's the matter of the unlockable ships. Though it takes some dedication to unlock the ships, there's some incentive to do so since they each sport distinct firing capabilities with their main weapon. They also have some interesting upgrades, though that still falls under the randomization of the end wave session, and they also have an ultimate form that decimates enemies.

When all of this is put together, Roche Fusion is rather solid. The action can be frantic, but there's rarely a time when the layout of enemies and ordnance on-screen seems impossible to overcome. The scoring system relies more on enemy death and your own survival to get the multiplier going, so while combos are nice, living longer is the surefire way to get astronomical scores. To that end, the game rewards skill greatly and presents lots of challenges, even on the easiest difficulty level. It is still kinder to players who want to get away from the infinite continue system of other bullet hell shooters but don't have the skill to progress without it. What really makes the game is the randomization for enemies and power-ups. There are times when you'll simply luck into easy situations or powerful weapons, and other times, you'll get all of the tough stuff early on. That random luck of the draw is the impetus for playing one more game —even after a grueling death. It may not be pleasing to shoot-'em-up fans who go for pattern recognition, but for everyone else, it represents a fresh take on the genre.

There are a few things the game doesn't do so well, though. The power-up orbs for leveling up your weapons and ultimate abilities are rather small and well hidden, especially when so many enemies and bullets are on-screen. They also tend to disappear quickly and linger around fallen enemies enough that you forget that they're even there or just don't bother to go after them. The chances of getting hit or killed are simply too great for upgrades that seem negligible unless you gets tons of them. Also, while your own deaths are spectacular enough, the game does a bad job of highlighting where you re-appear in the field. It takes a second longer than normal to search and find your location when you spawn, a task that becomes more difficult once you die in the middle of a boss fight among lots of minions. Though it doesn't result in an instant death, it can be annoying when you see other shooters get this part right.

Graphically, Roche Fusion looks good. Just about every creature and ship in the game is swathed in bright neon colors that make them stand out, and the animation sequences from appearance to destruction are nicely done. Particle effects are abundant but also restrained, as they look good but don't interfere with the action. The backgrounds may not be as pronounced, no doubt to highlight what needs to be shot, but they're still densely populated with stars, satellites, planets and the like. There are some nice effects also present, like the tilting of the HUD when you're moving and the pixelization of the ship when you're close to death.

As for the sound, it does well for itself. The effects follow the same template as other shooters with loud explosions and such, but they do the job rather well. The music is also quite good, as it summons a thumping electronic style that's meant to inspire energy. It fits the theme, but it also continues playing whether you're in the game or in the menus. This creates an interesting situation where one song ends and another plays with a small bit of silence in between, almost as if you're playing a CD or streaming radio in the background. That transition period is odd, but it also hides the fact that there isn't a wide selection of songs in the soundtrack.

With just the right technical proficiency behind it, Roche Fusion is a very good traditional shooting game. The procedurally generated stages combine with the seemingly random selection of power-ups for a shooting experience remains fresh with every playthrough. The ship selection and unlockable elements also contribute to this, and the presence of leaderboards for every ship and difficulty level provides enough of a push for players to keep going. Fans of shoot-'em-ups would be well served in picking up Roche Fusion.

Score: 8.5/10