Justice Bundle Reviews #1: Task Force Kampas

Task Force Kampas' tag line is "A classic arcade space shooter on steroids", which strikes me as a rather trite--and maybe even slightly offensive--attempt to describe what sets it apart from other shmups. What exactly does "casiopea" think is anabolically bloated about their game? The chunky bullets and hitboxes? The electronic-rock'n'roll soundtrack? The swift, no-nonsense way you get into the action? Or perhaps I'm reading too much in, and the Task Force is being treated for some inflammatory disease.

I found "Psychobaby" the easiest character to score a win with. A "double shot" upgrade or even reaching max power tends to be enough to compensate for the ship's initial limited screen coverage, and the punchier bullets are especially useful against bosses.

 
What I found interesting about the game had nothing to do with hormones, in any case. I picture someone designing a game in a mature genre like this asking themselves questions to figure out what their entry's unique shtick is, like:

Is there any reason not to hold down the fire button indefinitely? In many shmups, shooting might as well happen continuously and automatically, as there's never any downside associated with pew-pewing to the max. Here, you're good to shoot as much as you like until you take a hit; after a few seconds of invulnerability to let you settle your head, letting go of the fire button lets your ship regenerate health. There's a lovely, tense balancing act between keeping the field clear of foes that might get in that second, lethal hit, and recovering your buffer for the next wave.

Are waves/levels deterministic or stochastic? In a "procedural" shmup like Gradius, mastering a level is a matter of muscle memory. Given the exact same inputs and timings, you'll succeed repeatedly, or keep failing at the same spot. Kampas takes the other route, with enemy spawns, powerups, and even (to an extent) boss attack patterns shuffled up from one run to the next. The choice accomplishes two things: one, it ensures you have to react to events on screen rather than memorizing the level; and it provides random troughs of difficulty that sporadically let you progress further at the same degree of skill, a powerful hook for continued play. Sometimes the Original Golden Ghost Cursed Crab wrecks you with repeated bullet sprays, and sometimes it repeats its beam attack over and over, ushering you an easy in to the third level.

Steroids or no, Task Force Kampas gets the job done with no real missteps, and even a winning run won't take up your whole afternoon. A worthy buy at its asking price of $5 on Itch!