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Cave schmups coming to PC this year, the most bullets you’ll ever see on-screen

cave

You may not have heard of Japanese company Cave. They make schmups of the bullet hell variety, where you’re expected to dodge all the little globs and spears of purple you see above while holding the fire key and hoping the big bad dies first. They’re quite legendary in those circles, having released some of the more hardcore (read: impossible) schmups out there. Now they’re going to come to Steam, according to a teaser site that went online today.

There’s no released list of which of their many games will be making the jump, but the purple edging of the site itself points towardsMushihimesama, one of their more well-known games. Here’s what the hardest boss on offer in the 360 version was like:

It’s actually not quite as tough as it looks, though obviously still a herculean task of memorisation, practice and reflexes. You only ever have one health but your hitbox is fairly small, so it’s about finding the gaps and moving smoothly between them, making smart use of the screen-clearing bombs.

I’ve never played Cave’s stuff, but did spend a chunk of time witheXceed 2nd – Vampire REX, a far easier but very enjoyable varient that involves absorbing different colours of bullets to power yourself up. It’s a fun, simple genre that can accomodate as much time as you have – spend a life time improving or hit it up for 10 minutes of pretty explosions every now and then.