Shooper Nova (great name) merges together bullet hell top-down arena shooting with the progression of a sedentary action roguelike. In doing so, it aims to solve the lack of engagement players may feel from an auto battler and the overly familiar structure of a top-down arena shooter. It also throws lots of stats and ideas at you, so if you are a fan of Brotato – your stat-brain will be right at home.
The goal of Shooper Nova is survival. There are 20 waves of enemies, culminating in a boss that must be killed to complete a run. You control a central circular fortress wall in the middle of a circular arena and have full 360 rotation of your wall, which you will kit out with weapons and component parts in the shops between waves. Most weapons autofire, but some require manual triggers, and you can take full control of every shot fired if you want to. Your wall is made up of various slots, and at the start of each run, you’ll choose a starting weapon. Some like a minigun take up one slot, most weapons take up two, and some larger weapons (usually explosive or spread shots) take up three slots. You’ll control one main weapon and use the analogue stick to point in the direction you want to shoot like a twin stick shooter, and the rest of the weapons you place on your wall will shoot out depending on where they are facing.
The placement of your parts in the fortress wall is key to success because there are different types of weapons. Firepower are bullet weapons, explosives cause area of effect damage, and satellites don’t fire anything – they send satellites flying around the arena, causing effect damage and collision damage. On top of that, some weapons like the flamethrower burn enemies, an ice satellite will slow enemies down, and a lightning gun will spark enemies and chain attacks to nearby enemies too. Working out what your build is going to lean into in a run helps determine what weapons you’ll buy in the shops. Buy two level 1 versions of a weapon, and you can merge them into level 2. Two level 2’s make a level 3, and so on up to level 4. This all costs gold, which you’ll earn by killing enemies and shooting gold mines that populate levels. There is a storage unit to keep fortress wall components you aren’t currently using, and that is handy for storing future upgrades, and if you buy fortress wall extensions, you might have room to slot a weapon in.
It isn’t just weapons you can place on your defence wall, you can add buff components too. Damage buffs boost the damage for weapons on either side of it, or another part might increase attack speed. Others may product more damage over time. Components aren’t the only way to upgrade things in the shop, as Shooper Nova has tons of other things you can buy, too. Some upgrades may be weapon-type specific or just general boosts. Some of them add totally new weapons on top of your wall, like the powerful death ray that shoots across the arena following your shooting direction. Sheilds can be added, and even the way gold mines appear can be altered, too. It is worth remembering that the more weapons you have, the longer a reload of your weapons takes, so speeding that up, or adding more bullets to each round of ammo, can help balance that out. Stats are available for everything your wall can do, and it reminds me of the pages of stats from Brotato. There’s also a cool feature unlocked in New Game Plus 3, which lets you ban certain things from appearing in the store.
There are 8 levels of New Game Plus to unlock. Each one has new enemies, sometimes a different boss, and unlocks new special weapons and mutations to deal with. As Shooper Nova is a roguelite, there are a few things that carry over between runs. Gold is treated like experience points, which can increase your base damage by a few points and your starting gold for a new run. It helps, but certainly cannot be used in a way to out-grind a skill level issue. Each special weapon unlocked, like a super-large fortress wall or laser blast, has an enhanced version that can be unlocked by completing a certain level of New Game Plus with that special weapon selected. These weapons are not created equal, and some feel like hindrances at times, but they keep the game feeling fresh as they alter how you play the game. Indeed, before you start a run, you must choose a mutator from three randomly selected mutators that might change enemy health or the power of certain weapons.
I found Shooper Nova to be incredibly engaging and fun to play. You need to be quick and plan ahead as the game tries to overwhelm you with multiple swarms of enemies to juggle at once. This led me to often favour the lightning chain weapons as my main weapon to control. Where that does fall down is when the boss arrives at the end. Bosses are probably the weakest element of Shooper Nova. They aren’t particularly formidable or too challenging. You’ll probably know by wave 17 if you stand a chance of killing them before they hit your walls enough times to kill you or not. I either killed them with ease or failed miserably – nothing in between.
It is the smallest blight on what is a great game. Shooper Nova will keep you entertained for hours with a slow burn that gets increasingly more fraught and tactical. Prioritisation, accuracy, strategy and choice all play key roles in making a run successful, and Shooper Nova delivers all of that and more, excellently.
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