Wolflame - Astroport's Retro Shmup

What makes a retro game? Indie developers like to talk the talk, but when it comes to genuine retro flavor, many forgo that old time difficulty if favor of pixelated window dressing, not always. As you'll see, indie developer Astroport makes some pretty tough games, namely the horizontal shmup Satazius and vertical Wolflame, the latter being the latest in my own arcade exploits. Whether you're looking to get into the tougher tiers of shmup games, or maybe revisit your glory days, Wolflame is a retro game that packs a cabinet sized punch.

Wolflame has the difficulty to back it's retro shmup theme. Just surviving the ten stages of the game will mean dodging a bullet-hell number of projectiles that will either fill the screen, or be lobbed at a speed almost impossible to dodge. The velocity-projectile firing tanks got my full attention, they were too dangerous to be left alive, come to think of it, all the enemies are too dangerous to spare, especially those giant, multi-phase bosses that are waiting at the end of every stage. This may all sound like typical shmup gameplay, but what makes the difference here is that instead of a health bar or shield, Wolflame is a one-hit one-life rate of exchange. This isn't to say the game is unfair there's a number of features that make it accessible for even someone like me. 

Making every hard earned inch of progress save-able goes against the hard-as-hell retro gameplay that Astroport has achieved here, it may come as a sin against the gods of arcade shmupdom, but I like to win games before reviewing them, so I'm divided on the issue. Wolflame features a save, autosave and mid-mission checkpoints. Those checkpoints are strategically placed at the toughest parts of the levels, namely before bossfights. Tough bossfights means dying a lot, so there's also opportune weapon drops right before those boss encounters, that means you won't be retrying without at least one of those two weapon pylons occupied. 

I won't call Wolflame the toughest shmup ever, but certainly a step into the bigboy realm of the genre, more so than other games that nail the aesthetic but not the difficulty. If you're in any way trying to progress through this unforgiving yet rewarding genre of games, then Wolflame is a viable option. It's like a fancy sports car, if it really has what counts under the hood, then there's the inherent risk of turning into a flaming wreck. It's the high stakes that make for high octane action, and Wolflame burns a lot of octane.