Angel At Dusk
Released: November 7th, 2024
Developer: Akiragoya
Publisher: Akiragoya
Systems: PC, Switch (reviewed)
If David Cronenberg’s last five wet dreams were turned into a shoot ‘em up, you might have something like Angel at Dusk. While fundamentally a rather straightforward shmup, this game is so full of fleshly horrors it absolutely stands out as something.
You’re a bunch of amalgamated flesh and bone, flying around and shooting at different amalgamations of flesh and bone. There is a story, but it’s fucking bananas and it’s delivered intermittently in large text paragraphs that aren’t onscreen long enough for you to read them fully.
Look, I need to talk about a lot before I start detailing the actual gameplay, so I’ll get the cliff notes out of the way now - it’s a solid vertical shooter with an aggressive and fun combat style.
Now about that story…
From what I’ve gathered with my excellent sight reading skills, humanity tried to create a perfect state of being by eliminating all sources of conflict and dissatisfaction. They removed “bad thoughts” from criminals at first, then did away with various sensory inputs, then they decided the very notion of different sexes was a problem, and eventually concluded even having intelligence was a bad idea.
So it was that Angels were created. So far, so sensible!
Angels were thoughtless, driven purely by a desire to feel happy, and they were also so much skin and bones and eyeballs. They started to divide themselves, and consume each other, and divide again, and merge together, and basically become flesh soup and they fucking loved it. Some were massive, there were living “forests” of the things, and all was chill because nobody with a working brain was around to think it was gross.
Then one day, an angel registered pain after being bitten and didn’t like it, which snowballed into the return of self-awareness and a bunch of teeth n’ eyeballs shooting the fuck out of each other.
There’s more to it - so much more - and in order to piece together the entire opera you’ll have to complete many stages across two modes of play. It’s fucking wild shit, written in a style reminiscent of that one guy at a party who’s clearly on something he took before turning up and is loudly sharing his ideas about what’s “really going on.” I wouldn’t be surprised if, buried in all that text, there’s a worryingly sincere manifesto of some kind.
Loads of cool ideas are stuffed into it though, I must say. The idea of these Angels rediscovering themselves and evolving in a way that their creators would deem regressive makes for a genuinely neat narrative, even if it’s delivered the way it is.
Of course, the writing is just part of it. How about those visuals? The Thing by way of Hieronymous Bosch is one way to describe it. Everything, from the player character to the enemies to the backdrops to the HUD, is a screwy meat nightmare. Even the more recognizable humanoid figures are to be found submerged and malformed among twisted piles of tissue. It’s grotesque, unsettling, and it’s a sick kind of pretty.
As gruesome as they can look, one can’t deny the designs are amazing. Some of the bosses in particular are gorgeous in their own disgusting ways. Alluring feminine forms and handsome faces are buried among obscenely fascinating networks of limbs and glands. Yet, for all the allusion to orifices and protrusions, there’s something inherently sexless about the more suggestive elements.
After all, even the most boobified Angel in this world lacks the impetus to do anything remotely sexy. Organs and holes and even entire faces just exist as a small, often vestigial part of a writhing mass of biology. Even the most phallic imagery is presented as a disaffected matter of course.
I’m investing far too much into the art direction here, so let’s just go with “it’s fucked up, mate.”
The various HUD elements are bony things with eyeballs that creepily follow your avatar’s onscreen movements. Said avatar is like a weird vertebrate dragonfly vessel that gets bigger and more complex as it levels up. Even basic enemies are often exquisitely detailed. Some of the backgrounds are so grotesque, however, they may genuinely qualify for phobia warnings.
I don’t consider myself very easy to squick out with imagery, but a few of the backdrops make me feel wrong.
So yeah, it’s a decent shooter too!
Angel at Dusk plays pretty much exactly like your average top-down shmup. You fly up a vertical playfield as enemies buzz their way down and you all exchange a ridiculous amount of brightly colored projectiles at each other. As you level up throughout a run, you get more and bigger projectiles, and collectible stuff falls down at you throughout. The usual schtick.
One differentiating factor is the way Angel encourages players to press an attack as far as it can go. Unlike other shmups, there isn’t any contact damage, the only risk being that of bumping off an enemy and into bullets. Further, you deal a lot more damage and get important resources by attacking as proximally as possible. Ideally, this is a game played directly in the enemy’s face, which feels pretty good.
As well as your general spew of missiles, you’ve got a charge attack that isn’t just about dealing damage. Charging is predominantly used for pushing away or outright eliminating enemy projectiles, and a big part of combat is knowing when to ready that move to protect yourself. Naturally, charge moves aren’t infallible, and will weaken with every projectile they come into contact with.
There’s also a super move that you fill up a meter for. How they behave varies according to what you equip, but they always involve a shield of some kind for added temporary protection. Beyond that, some of them may heal you while others deal significant damage to opponents.
There's a large variety of weapons you can equip for your regular, charged, and special attacks, each one altering their behavior in significant ways. From classic pew-pew bullets to shorter range needles to big bouncing balls, you have a solid slate of options for outfitting your damage output.
Some are more useful than others, with charge attacks especially varying in terms of usability. The charged missile is powerful, but it only stops enemy fire when it explodes, which isn’t defensively sound. Meanwhile, the bubble makes big bubbles, which I like because they’re bubbles. It’s swings and roundabouts, and just as much about objective practicality as about personal taste. Some weapons are just kinda shit, and some aren’t.
Exactly what kind of equipment you access, and how you access it, is determined by the gameplay mode you select. As noted earlier, there are two main modes, Arcade and Original, each with their own twists.
Arcade mode is the more straightforward option. Here, you play a linear sequence of stages with a preset vessel. You unlock new vessels as you play, but the weapons they have cannot be changed or upgraded in any way. As you complete runs, you’ll open up more stage sequences, each pertaining to one of several sarcastically described difficulty settings - Very Hard is claimed to be the easiest one.
Original mode lets you outfit your own vessel with the myriad weapons dropped throughout play. There’s a linear Story mode and a Chronicle mode in which you choose different routes between stages, Darius style. Whichever mode you go with, the general idea is that enemies will get stronger and stronger until you’re inevitably overwhelmed, at which point you equip stronger gear to push ever forward.
Naturally, weapon stats get higher as you obtain them from deeper into a run. You’re encouraged to keep switching out your gear for stronger stuff and to eat your lower level gear to obtain nutrients. Of course that’s what you do. Nutrients can be spent on passive upgrades, boosting your health, your pickup radius, and other such fancies.
Combat is fast paced and about as bullet-hellish as one could expect. It does need to be emphasized that, despite the neat gimmicks, Angel does little fundamentally to set itself apart from a ton of other shooters. That’s not a bad thing, per se, but it does eventually wear a little thin.
Longevity is threatened by the amount of replaying you’ll likely end up doing. There’s a large number of stages, but not enough enemies and bosses to cover them all, so expect to see the same fights again and again. While you can start a run from any previously beaten stage, you start at level one every time so it behooves you to backtrack at least several stages each run. This doesn’t help the repetition.
It’s a shame you’ll encounter the same bosses over and over, as repeated exposure rubs off the effect of seeing such bizarre monstrosities the first time around.
Despite its own snark about how players will wet themselves and run away crying, Angel at Dusk is actually one of the more accessible shmups I’ve played. I’m terrible at the things despite enjoying them, yet I’ve been getting along with this one quite well. That’s not to say it’s easy, and it is definitely designed to end your runs with sheer force, but it’s playable.
That said, a few moments feel less like a challenge and more like luck-based hurdles. Some enemy attack patterns are arranged in such a way that certain charge moves just aren’t the right shape to keep projectiles from sweeping in at an unprotectable angle.
Enemy bullets are usually some shade of red or orange, which can make them hard to see against all the similarly hued backgrounds. They’re not against sneaking in from offscreen either, which can be a real pisser when you’re encouraged to get close to enemies and your primary defensive measure requires a charging time.
Nevertheless, none of my issues make for a bad game. At its very worst, Angel at Dusk is a strong vertical shooter that will provide a satisfying amount of entertainment for its admission fee.
As well as the remarkable visual style, credit must also be given to the music. There’s a beautiful soundtrack here, characterized with a lot of gentle synth and piano that contrasts the frantic combat nicely. When it does up the tempo to match the onscreen energy, it does a bang up job.
Angel at Dusk may not be up there with the most essential shooters, but its bonkers concept and sickeningly beautiful visuals help it to stand out while the aggressive combat provides plenty of fun. Well, until repetition starts to set in. An enjoyable time, especially if the average shooter isn’t enough like Videodrome for you.
7.5/10
