Chain Blaster Tests Your Vertical Shoot-em Up Skills With Endless Enemies

We recently reported G-Style’s new vertical shoot ‘em up on the Nintendo 3DS eShop called Chain Blaster, that has an interesting feature allowing you to fire chain blasts that detonate all formation ships in one big linked explosion. G-Style introduces some additional features, along with some basic gameplay.

The A button is used for regular shots, while the B button shoots Chain Blasts. The Y button is used for performing the Overdrive ability that puts things in slow motion when the action gets a little too hectic.

The rules are pretty simple: shoot the enemies, called Viruses, and avoid being shot. The game is never-ending, so your goal is to try getting the highest score possible before getting the eventual game over screen. By defeating enemies, you’ll acquire Blast Matter, which is used to boost your Blast Gauge (shown as the yellow bar on the right screen). This bar is divided into three parts, each one allowing you to fire a Chain Blast, for up to three shots.

When using the Chain Blast, it will create a chain of explosions after hitting a target, called the Chain Wave. All enemies that are destroyed by the Chain Wave will create an additional Chain Wave, allowing you to keep a combo of destruction going. By doing this, you can gain additional points to further your high score. Using the Cross Point trigger allows you to aim your Chain Blasts for potential massive combos against the endless fleet of enemies.

The slow motion Overdrive ability also uses up a part of the Blast Gauge. While active, it will slow down all enemies and their bullets, allowing you to work your way around a pinch. Additionally, you can also take your time using Chain Blasts while your opponents are slowed down.

If you can accumulate your points high enough, you’ll be rewarded with an additional Extend Gauge (shown on the left image). This acts as an extra life for your vessel, and you can get up to three more lives. If you manage to fill up the Extend Gauge, getting additional Extend points will activate the Extend Bonus, which will increase your score for a period of time. If your ship gets blown up while you don’t have anything in your Extend Gauge, you’ll automatically get a game over.

Here’s a look at the ships that will be taking down Viruses. On the left is the Sagittarius, which has the ability to shoot regular shots and also Chain Blasts. It’s an offense-minded anti-Virus program. The Orion, on the right, is more for advanced players. Not much is mentioned about its abilities, but it is said to be ideal for obtaining high scores and its performance is greatly different from the Sagittarius.

Here are three Viruses known as Sargas, Acrab and Shuala. The Sargas attacks in huge groups, the aggressive Acrab will shoot anything at first sight, and the rare Shaula will rain bullets all over the place.

The Antares is a mini-boss enemy that requires doing massive damage three times in order to defeat. In addition, there’s a boss virus by the code name “Ouroboros”. Not much is known about the boss apart from its given name.

Chain Blaster also lets you  upload your high score on the internet and check out the top ranked players around the world. The game is currently available to download on the Nintendo 3DS eShop in Japan for 700 yen. G-Style is also offering a demo version for players who’d like to try it out.