Grand Brix Shooter can appeal to both casual and more intense gamers. Like other manic shooting games, it’s easy to just pick up and start playing like crazy, smashing buttons and shooting and just having fun watching everything explode. Beyond the basics and button-mashing though, Grand Brix Shooter is actually quite challenging. For players that want to be truly good at the game and not just rely on luck entirely, it will take time to play and learn exactly how all the mechanics work. It will take time to master everything and even more time to actually complete every level. At the end of the day, though, and important part of the gameplay is fusing ship with other ships, all of which appear at random. So it’s always going to be a little bit about luck! That doesn’t mean that gamers can’t develop skills for succeeding at Grand Brix Shooter, though; it will just take time and practise, and some quick reactions.

Grand Brix Shooter was made for people that like arcade-style shooting games that don’t get caught up in characters and cutscenes. It’s made for people that just want to play the game and destroy a lot of stuff, enjoy the light show that accompanies that, and get instant gratification and entertainment. For gamers that want something along the lines of DoDonPachi or Ikaruga, Grand Brix Shooter is a great new challenge. It has the same feeling as other bullet hell games with some new features to keep things fresh and a bit difficult, too. Plus with both local co-op as well as online multiplayer available as well as the single-player mode, you can always team up with others to take down enemies together!

If you aren’t familiar with bullet hell or manic shooter games, that’s the first thing you should understand before going into Grand Brix Shooter. This style of game means that there is going to be relentless wave after wave of bullets coming at you from all directions that you must simultaneously evade while also destroying the source. Imagine Space Invaders, but it’s come a long way and has become a lot more crazy and fast-paced. Grand Brix Shooter has decent 3D ships on varying 2D backgrounds and a lot of colours, an upbeat electronica soundtrack, and many ship designs to enjoy. If you play the game on Steam as we did, it also features 25 Steam Achievements and a Steam Leaderboard. Grand Brix Shooter also has an international leaderboard within the game.

Grand Brix Shooter is definitely crazy and can be overwhelming at first because there are so many things happening. Laser bullets and enemy ships fill the colourful screen and you have to react quickly or lose. That pressure and excitement are exactly what fans of the genre crave and love though, and Grand Brix Shooter delivers. While you can certainly pick up the game as a new player and have a lot of fun before you inevitably lose, it’s important to go into the game knowing that you WILL lose. Probably a lot. But if you stick around and master the system and mechanics, you can enjoy the game even more - and maybe even be good at it someday.

Grand Brix Shooter has a pretty simple story told through 2D comic panels at the beginning of the game. You play as the young Prince Brix, a boy out to save his planet from invaders along with his robot. You board the Brix Core, your ship with cool fusion abilities, and have to rely on your skill, quick reflexes, and a bit of luck to fight back against this evil. Grand Brix Shooter is, at its core, a bullet-hell shooting game. So really, the story isn’t the most important part of it. Mostly the plot is there to set up why you’re combining aircraft and battling enemies, and to give you a little bit of insight into the character you’re stepping into the shoes of.
But let’s be honest; Grand Brix Shooter will win over people for its gameplay, not its narrative. Let the narrative give you some context and motivation, and then move on to just playing the game and enjoying the chaos.

Grand Brix Shooter is an arcade-style game that you can play at home. If you’re looking for a strong narrative or a game that you can save your progress in to complete another time, look elsewhere. Grand Brix Shooter isn’t concerned with that kind of thing; and why should it be? It’s meant to be a game that you can just jump into and shoot lasers at invading ships while rocking out to a cool soundtrack, and that is exactly what it does. The gameplay in Grand Brix Shooter is an old-school side-scrolling platformer mixed with better graphics and music, along with a few more advanced features than arcade bullet hell games used to have. While it is still a side-scroller, the ships are all rendered in 3D, and the backgrounds consist of beautiful sci-fi locations done in many colours that change with each stage. Lasers and bullets are all very colourful as well, adding to the sensory overload that Grand Brix Shooter is likely to give you the first time you play.

When you start a game, Grand Brix Shooter lets you select from a single-player, local cooperative play, or online multiplayer. You can also choose between playing on casual (normal) difficulty or hardcore (difficult). The first time you start the game, you also have the chance to play a tutorial to teach you the basics. There aren’t that many controls to learn in Grand Brix Shooter, and the PC version can easily be played with just a keyboard. As you play through each stage, you will face a lot of small ships that are easy to destroy with just one hit and various boss ships that take more hits and manoeuvring to destroy. These ships are more likely to drop fusion pieces that allow you to upgrade your ship into a new and more powerful version. Your ship can also level up during stages by picking up stars that are dropped by destroyed enemies, each time becoming more powerful and unlocking new special moves that can be unleashed for even more destruction.

Quitting the game means resetting your progress so far, just like in an arcade. But there are leaderboards within the game as well as on Steam, so you can see how your final score compares to players around the world! Each user name is displayed next to their country’s flag, so you can also see which countries boast the top Grand Brix Shooter players.

Overall, Grand Brix Shooter did what it set out to do. The basic idea of the game is not new, but it is one that many players have enjoyed for years and will continue to enjoy in the future. It adds the fresh new feature of fusing ships together to give it something to set it apart from its competition, while still feeling familiar to fans of the genre. Grand Brix Shooter caters to both solo players that just want to have fun as well as competitive players that want to compete with and play with other gamers around the world. The graphics in Grand Brix Shooter also show that the bullet hell genre of games has come a long way since Space Invaders, helping the game to feel clean and new and give it a really science fiction vibe. While the pros outweigh the cons in our eyes, there are also a few things that we feel could have been improved. Here are our top pros and cons for Grand Brix Shooter!

Grand Brix Shooter has the potential to be a fun game for anyone to play, whether new to the genre or a veteran. It is challenging to play for a long time and be truly good at, which might be frustrating or turn some players away that just feel overwhelmed or overstimulated by how chaotic the game can be. But if you look at that chaos as part of the charm, and appreciate what Grand Brix Shooter is trying to do for the genre by adding in fusing ships and other original details, it’s a fun game. So whether you’re looking for something to kill a few minutes after work and give you a buzz or a game you can take your time to master and feel truly accomplished, Grand Brix Shooter can give it to you. Just don’t let it scare you away the first time you try it! Everyone dies the first time. Or ten.