A vertically-scrolling shoot-’em up with a bright, cheerful art style, poppy music, cute character and enemy designs, and score items that you can juggle with your shots? Exo-Calibre wears its TwinBee inspiration on its sleeve, but don’t assume this is just some imposter. With its varied characters and clever implementation of a melee attack, Vampixel’s latest finds its own little groove.
Exo-Calibre largely sticks to the familiar shmup format. After picking your pilot—three available initially, with more to unlock—you jump into your ship and shoot down enemies, while dodging their increasingly complex shot patterns and attack formations. A boss at the end of each level kicks things up a notch, and the goal is to survive through six stages. You know the drill.
Where it stands out is with its melee attacks. In addition to regular shots, you’ve also got a short-range sword dash that you can use on a brief cooldown. This attack can kill any foe in one shot, but more importantly, it can cut through enemy bullets. Liberal use of your melee attack is a good way to deal with dense enemy shot patterns and rack up your score multiplier, but getting careless with it—like dashing headlong into a shot pattern you won’t be able to escape from—can quickly get you killed. There’s a fun risk/reward dynamic inherent in the melee attack, and using it well is the key to high scores and collecting money to spend on upgrades.
Aside from that, Exo-Calibre feels a little rudimentary. Bosses and enemies, while interesting enough visually, don’t really stand out in terms of encounter design. They’re not bad by any stretch, just far from memorable: orthodox shot patterns that don’t synergise with the melee dash mechanic as much as they could. Pacing is a bit of an issue, too, with long stages that include a lot of needless downtime. It’s not so much of an issue the first couple of times through the game, but the more you play, the more tedious those moments become—a problem for a game designed around arcade-style replayability and score chasing.
That said, a handful of different game modes help to keep things fresh. As well as a standard arcade mode with limited lives, there’s a Story Mode with unlimited continues and a more generous health system. It’s functionally similar to credit feeding in an arcade game, but the separation of “just here for the vibes” and “gunning for the 1CC” into separate modes is a nice touch. There’s also a boss rush and a timed score-attack mode, which are exactly as you’d expect, but sadly, no practice mode. Three unlockable characters brings the total to six, each with very different weapons and play styles. Exo-Calibre isn’t short on variety, and if you want to shoot for 100% completion, it’ll keep you occupied for a while.
Coming from the same studio behind the delightful Takotan, the bright, cheerful pixel art and playful character designs in Exo-Calibre should come as no surprise. It channels the cute-’em-up style of games like TwinBee nicely, with a style of pixel art that’s rich and detailed—clearly inspired by the arcade games of yesteryear, but without going overboard trying to reproduce a “retro” look. An energetic soundtrack and a light but entertaining narrative round out the package.
Exo-Calibre is a nice addition to the ever-growing pool of indie shoot-’em-ups. While it doesn’t push boundaries enough to take on the genre’s giants, the nifty use of melee attacks, colourful art style, and charming characters are enough to make this worth checking out.
Nintendo Switch version reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2. Review code provided by the publisher.
Exo-Calibre dishes up a fun a vibrant scrolling shoot-'em-up, albeit one that doesn't push boundaries as much as it could.
