I’ve been playing a lot of Cursorblade lately. It’s a game I play in spurts, like I do with a lot of games really. It’s certainly one of the easier ones to just jump in for a bit, with runs typically being quick.
I first played Cursorblade for Next Fest in October 2023, and bought it on launch a few weeks later. One of it’s features advertised on it’s Steam page is “Enjoy mindless fun”, and I think it hits that mark.
Cursorblade is a bullet hell where you are a sword/cursor, and you swipe through enemies with your mouse to damage them, helped along with whatever upgrades you pick up along the way. Most do additional damage in some form, like shooting out porcupine quills when enemies die, dropping missiles on random enemies when you do damage by swiping, or surrounding your blade with little cacti. Some are more passive, increasing the chance of triple damage or freezing enemies for a moment. Every few levels will also come with a defensive upgrade, such increasing the drop rate of hearts, lowering enemy health, or allowing you to come back from the dead with one heart.
You’re limited to 6 unique offensive upgrades you can take, so you need to pick what works for you. You do get a few re-rolls, just in case. Additionally, filling all 6 slots will ensure you only see those upgrades going forward. They will upgrade to level 8, picking up increased power as they go, some increasing the damage, while others will increase their chance to occur.
Each wave is the same for each run, with a boss at 40, and I’m not sure what happens at 50 beyond an achievement. The game gets increasingly difficult, and I’m not ashamed to admit that while I’m improving, consistently even getting to the boss at 40 is hard. A lot of the demo feedback was around the game was too easy and the dev worked on bumping that up in places, and I don’t think it’s TOO hard, but you can’t be reckless. I think a key thing is just to remember to slow down, while the combo multiplier only works for kills in a close timeframe, it’s still generous enough unless you’re not attacking at all for a moment.
Anyway, at 5 bucks, it’s a fairly cheap time-waster that I keep picking up and trying to get better at. It’s rewarded my efforts of late with earning some of the score based achievements and beating the boss. I haven’t gone back and done a review for any other non-demos, though I should do one for Minami Lane. After all, I can’t think of any better recommendation than buying it at launch, or at least wishlisting the ones without a release date.