Lilac 0 Review

Lilac 0 is an arcade-style shoot-‘em-up developed by Victor Pouderoux and published by Digerati. This game instantly hooked me with its character design and art style; I mean, a robotic samurai shooting and slicing through a futuristic world? Sign me the hell up! I’m not that great at shoot-‘em-ups, but I decided to give it a shot.

The pixel art is very wonderfully done with quite a bit of detail and animation in each character and makes strong use of its colour palette, no matter what you may choose. A lot of shoot-’em-ups can become overwhelming with all the flashing lights and thousands of bullets coming at you. However, here, the backgrounds and enemies don’t blend in with each other and are very good-looking, as well as being very clear what is and isn’t going to kill you. This is all displayed in a sort of arcade-style vertical screen set up with scanlines and curves at the corner to replicate a CRT screen, which is very nostalgic, although you can disable them in the settings if it bothers you too much.

The story is fairly simple, though, and very ‘90s at its core where robots are doing their damnedest to destroy humanity, and only one machine (well, two, but you have to unlock the other guy) is badass enough to defy them. It’s not too important but it makes for a nice intro cutscene that really reminds me of those attraction modes that play when no one is playing on the machine.

Let's get into the gameplay. There are two player characters you can choose from, Rairakku and Mordred, who have similar kits that only differ in range and speed. They both have omnidirectional movement and can shoot, dash (which doubles as a melee attack and deletes bullets), and scan targets to slash multiple enemies at once. It has very simple controls, but you will need to take advantage of them, especially the dash, since orange adversaries can only be killed by it. Even on Novice difficulty, Lilac 0 will test your skills with lots of enemies and bullets filling the screen, but it never feels unfair. Everything can be dodged or deflected, and there are plenty of warnings so you don’t take a cheap shot. It is totally possible to beat the game without getting hit once and that is always so cool to see in a game. Control of your position and the balance between DPS and survival is important here. If you aren’t up to snuff, you’re gonna be dying a lot, which isn’t great for getting high on the leaderboard. By default, you only have three HP (maximum is six) before you’re killed and there are no checkpoints. At the very least, stages are short, and you don’t have to retry from the beginning. I definitely felt frustrated for letting myself get hit by the slower-moving shots, but all it did was encourage me to try and increase my awareness of my surroundings. I've seen others play the game on Master difficulty, and they make it look so easy!

If you want a better score to show off locally and online, you need to kill your enemies stylishly, pulling off multi-kills or delivering a couple de grace on a defeated boss. It’ll add a multiplier to your score up to 8x, so you‘re very encouraged to kill fast and play risky. Constantly shooting and scanning while trying to strategically use my dashes makes for exciting moments that make you feel like a badass. Overall, the gameplay is really nice with intuitive controls and face-paced action, although I would’ve liked a little indicator for when my dash is ready.

Aside from getting a high score, there are unlockables that you get by completing stages and clearing the game at certain difficulties. You can get colour palettes that change how the game looks, remixed stages, and even continues coins for the struggling player. There aren’t that many of them, but it's a nice incentive to replay the game. Plus, there are only five levels, so it shouldn’t take up much of your time.

Lilac 0 is a fun shoot-’em-up that provides a tough challenge, great for veterans of the genre but not too friendly for anyone fresh. It never feels unfair, and there’s always this “one more try” type of feeling.