Indiescovered: Isbarah

Isbarah is a game I can only describe as a “bullet hell dodge-em-up platformer.” It’s an odd hybrid of several genres that comes together to create something that I’ve never seen anywhere else. In Isbarah, you play as Iria, a goddess who is the daughter of the ruler of a world created by the thoughts of humans. She acts as a sort of “enforcer” for her father, punishing those who seek to cause chaos in the world. The world that Iria’s father rules over is made up of completed thoughts called the Designed. Those thoughts that are incomplete, the Designless, are relegated to a different world, so as not to allow them to infect the Designed. The game follows Iria’s quest to take down a string of other gods that aim to cause chaos using the Designless and even the Designless themselves.

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Gameplay takes place exclusively in multi-stage boss battles. Each of the game’s enemies is a boss at least thrice Iria’s size that throws dozens of bullets in her direction at once. That may sound simple enough in most bullet hells, but Iria is bound by gravity and she can’t shoot back. She has only three powers: she can create a barrier that can either temporarily stop the movement of bullets that collide with it or serve as a platform, she can slow time, and she can blink—or “dash”—a short distance.

By taking away the ability to fight back, you’re forced to rely solely on your mobility. It’s not about holding the fire button while you dodge around. It’s all about dodging around.

The game is designed from the ground up to support the fact that you can’t fight back. During the first stage of each battle, you’re tasked with using Iria's powers to activate and fire three different guns in order to take down the boss’ shields. To do this, you have to dash through each gun and then sit within a certain radius of it as it moves around. Each time you leave the radius, it slowly powers down until you enter it again. Once you have been within the radius long enough to power it up, it fires.

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Once all three guns have fired and the boss’ shields are down, you are transported to a part of the map that you are then temporarily locked into. There is a much larger circle that you must stand in while your opponent rains projectiles upon you from all directions. After the circle is filled, you get around three seconds to dash through your opponent. You don’t have to make it in time in order to deal damage. However, if you do make it in time, you get a health bonus and some extra points.

You have a maximum of three health at any one time. Once it’s gone, you can either use one of a finite number of continues or restart the level entirely in order to try again. The health bonuses earned from dashing into your weakened opponent at the end of the second stage are the only way to regain lost health.

This is the standard cycle that is repeated once for every hit the boss can take—with higher levels of difficulty allowing the boss to take more hits. It’s also a fairly short cycle, with each level usually taking no more than ten minutes to complete. Despite that, each stage manages to feel unique. Dozens of creative bullet patterns are on display throughout the game, each level pitting you against more complex and threatening patterns. One level, you could be facing several walls of bullets with small gaps in them combined with smaller barrages that fire directly at Iria. The next, you could be facing a barrage of meteor-sized bullets that come from off-screen while the boss fires smaller barrages out from itself. I found that there was no shortage of new challenges as I progressed through the game.

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Each of these challenges could be likened to a puzzle. While, in some cases, you could potentially manage to not use the intended solution, there is still an intended solution. You’re meant to dodge here at this time. You’re meant to block these bullets at that time. The core of the game is learning each boss’ bullet patterns and how to counter them.

The game world is rendered in a hand-painted style that works better in some levels than in others. The game's skeletal animation system doesn't always provide the best animations either and some animations even border on awkward. However, the art is serviceable overall and the vibrant color palette only adds to the experience.

Isbarah is fast-paced, it’s intense, and it forces you to play it differently than you would most other games. It keeps you on your toes every step of the way as you dodge through barrage after barrage. It can be incredibly difficult, but the game is responsive and each boss down leaves you feeling that much more accomplished.

Isbarah is available on Steam for $13.99.