I don’t think I’ve ever played an arcade-style shoot-’em-up (commonly referred to as “shmups” by us genre nerds) that took away all your power ups away at the start of each new level. And certainly not one where those power ups are also your hit points—where you can flawlessly destroy the boss of one stage with full resources to hand, and then be one stray shot away from a game over at the start of the next. At least, not until I played Nephenthesys, a game whose solid foundations are undermined by a bizarre and poorly-conceived mash-up of staple genre mechanics.
Nephenthesys gets the rudimentary stuff right. Precise movement and responsive controls ensure you can smoothly dodge enemy shots. Enemies and their bullet patterns aren’t the most original or inspired, but they work well. This might sound like damning with faint praise, but I’ve played too many low-budget shoot-’em-ups that stumble at these first hurdles, so Let’s Dev Studios deserves credit here.
It’s in those supplementary systems that things start to come apart. Your ship’s weapon power, durability, and bombs (or other special weapon, depending on ship choice)—things most shmups treat as separate elements—are all tied to the same power-up system. Collect a power item and get stronger, take a hit and lose a power level, and at full power, you can spend one power level to use your special. The merging of these pieces isn’t inherently bad, and Nephenthesys isn’t the first to do it, but the implementation here is reductive. Instead of creating any sort of strategic resource management through competing priorities, it just means tools being underutilise. It’s rarely worth sacrificing what is effectively an extra life to use a special weapon, especially when continues are limited and kick you back to the start of the current stage. It also means you can’t rely on having a bomb available when you do actually need one. And, of course, there’s the nail in the coffin: complete power loss at the start of each new level.
That’s made worse by repetitive level design and limited scoring mechanics that do little to encourage a creative or risky approach. Across four stages, you’ll see the same half-dozen enemies, in the same formations, over and over again; as soon as you’ve figured out how to deal with them, the lengthy stage portions become a slog. Boss fights are a bit more interesting, and a handful of unlockable ships with unique weapons add a little bit of variety, but not enough to offset the bland levels and undercooked power-up system.
Presentation-wise, Nephenthesys looks fine, if unremarkable. The stage backgrounds and regular enemies are forgettable, but the player ships and bosses find at least a little bit of personality through their low-poly (by design) 3D models. There’s a hint of early 3D shoot-’em-ups like RayStorm and Star Soldier: Vanishing Earth here—a similar vibe, at least, if not pushed to the same creative limits.
Despite my criticisms (and score), I actually hope Let’s Dev Studios sticks around the shoot-’em-up space. Nephenthesys falls short in a lot of ways, too many to make it a game I can recommend, but there’s a good foundation in there. Build on that with a better understanding of the nuances that make a good shoot-’em-up good, and the next game could be a hit.
There's a decent foundation here, but ill-considered mechanics and a lack of finesse prevent Nephenthesys from ever really getting off the ground.
