Deathsmiles Deluxe Edition – review

Deathsmiles Deluxe is made by cult Japanese arcade developer Cave and is the studio's first boxed game to be released here. A relatively unknown entity in Europe, Cave's work is extremely highly regarded and famous not just for its intimidating difficulty, but the staggering prices collectors pay for copies of its rarest titles, which sometimes fetch more than £1,000.

Deathsmiles, like most of Cave's output, is a 2D scrolling shoot-'em-up in its classic form. If you don't remember gaming in the early 1990s, a shoot-'em-up sees the player pilot a small vehicle through fields of bullets, taking down waves of suicidal adversaries. The genre's endlessly revisited premise – singlehandedly eradicating a seemingly insurmountable enemy invasion – barely needs elaboration. Always outnumbered, the player must press on, constantly being pushed to the edge of their ability to react in time. The reason for the battle matters not, only the fight itself.

As with all of Cave's games, Deathsmiles drives the concept of the shoot-'em-up to extremes. Here, where projectile-spewing fairies and mythical beasts replace the typical military spacecraft of the genre, bullets cascade towards the player at intense pace in dense formations. Intricate patterns of neon pink spiral and intersect, hypnotic and savagely intense. Amid this swirling maze of gaudy ordnance, the player must calmly dodge their way towards the game's end.

And yet, behind all the excess and energy of the action, there is a scoring system that gives the game a quite remarkable depth. To play it properly is to juggle numbers and watch reeling bonus counters throughout, collecting and then banking multipliers and activating special mechanics that allow you to maximise scores.

Equally, a common misconception about the shoot-'em-up is that the games end too quickly, and certainly Deathsmiles can be completed in 30 minutes, but to learn to play properly – exploiting nuances and surviving the experience with just one "credit" – can offer hundreds of hours of game play, especially if you consider the numerous extra modes included here.

As Cave's UK debut, Deathsmiles is a masterful selection from its back catalogue. Its gothic visuals are beautifully realised and its gameplay is exquisitely intricate. Neatly implemented customisable difficulty means players of every standard can enjoy the thrill of navigating the manic bullet patterns Cave is famed for and, thanks to its UK publisher, this wonderful game is finally both affordable and accessible.