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Among the many beauties of Arco is that it’s a secret, gentle introduction to bullet hell shootingKeeping time
Keeping time
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Panic
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Panic
There are many reasons to play and write aboutArco. The Mesoamerican pixelart landscapes, for example - radiant, cloud-hung platters of land with people and buildings reduced to daubs of paint in the foreground. The fact that it’s about witnessing and surviving colonial invasion, rather than the more familiar European or North American video game fantasy of searching aNew Worldfor plunder.
Still, I don’t feel comfortable talking about a lot of Arco, because I haven’t finished the game. It launched during the busy season around Gamescom, and slipped under our radar despite Katharine’s (RPS in Peace)fierce enthusiasm for the preview build. It’s not a massive game but it’s also not one I’m inclined to rush: I’m only in the second of its five acts. Still, I feel the itch to write about it, not least because it deserves to sell a lot better than it currently is. So let me focus on something more immediate and transferable, the battle system, and why I like it so much.
Arco - Official Release Date TrailerWatch on YouTube
Arco - Official Release Date Trailer
Arco’s battles take place in single-screen arenas with a smattering of interactive terrain fixtures, like grouchy plant bulbs that fire needles in a 360 degree arc when bumped. Battles are broken into pauses, rather than turns, with characters, enemies and projectiles frozen in place while you make choices. During each pause, you can pick movement trajectories and aim abilities using points, which gradually replenish; you can also wait on the spot to restore a bunch of points in one go. You can also visualise where enemies are heading and what action they’ll perform next.
Given that you are often outnumbered and outgunned - you don’t even have a gun, in the acts I’ve played - survival becomes a question of evading in a way that sets you up to attack. Keep pulling back, keep skirting the perimeter, and you’ll be relentlessly zoned or swamped. Instead, you must surge forward and thread the gaps in the offensive, pouncing when attackers reload or performing abilities that interrupt them. You must kite the sword-wielding conquistadors while manouevring toward the gunslingers positioned behind them.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Panic
Or at least it would, if I were any good at bullet hell shooters. I love looking at these games, at their devious and obliterating polychrome patterns. I love racking my brain about how the designers arranged the flying pieces such that thereis, in fact, a milimetre-wide safe route for the player that also somehow allows you to fire back at whatever screen-sized juggernaut is in play. But playing them, I’m too zoomed in on my ship, bucking and bouncing like a leaf thrown into boiling water, to appreciate the spectacle.
I’m coming at it from a dabbler’s perspective, but it seems a minor tragedy that a genre that lends itself to such opulent lightshows should be so tricky to enjoyasa lightshow without perishing instantly. I guess that’s the point of Gitting Gud here: the more versed you are, the more you can carve away the overwhelm and see the game you’re engulfed in.
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Panic
Find Arco onSteam.
