There aren’t a lot of cute ‘em ups these days. In fact, if we’re being really honest, there never have been. Sure, we get the occasional Cotton game here and there, and the Parodius series is brilliant of course, but as sub-genres go, the cute ‘em up is definitely an ignored one. So when one finally does come out, it’s always a fingers crossed thing hoping for something that’s going to be fun.
As you’re probably already figured out, Horgihugh & Friends from doujin developer PiXEL and publisher Aksys Games is a cute ‘em up. A horizontal cute ‘em up to be more specific. Aliens have attacked the earth and ace pilots Hugh and Figaro (a dog and a cat respectively) are the last line of defense to repel the aliens ravaging the earth. They’re equipped with the last military equipment Earth has to offer as well, two old biplanes.
Now while these are no ordinary biplanes thankfully. For one, they’ve got infinite ammo and for another, there are powerups galore in a glorious full denial of the laws of physics. On normal mode you control Hugh, the dog in the red biplane. If you choose easy mode, you control Figaro the cat. Either way, the levels are pretty much the same, horizontal scrolling levels with a fair number of environmental hazards and a wide assortment of alien fighters.
What you’ll quickly find in Horgihugh is that the game itself is remarkably unforgiving to start, even if the patterns are incredibly predictable and the enemy count is fairly low. The hit box for your ship is fairly large and the environments require fairly tight navigation to pick up gems (you’ll need them) and to squeeze through and grab powerups. There’s nowhere near the fine movement needed for a Cave game for example, but it’s still a frustrating game where you feel fairly underpowered, especially at first.
Powerups come in the form of a support character who flies in and tosses medals from their plane. Unfortunately, they come zooming in halt about midscreen and toss them backwards and down so if you happen to be playing the front of the screen rather than the rear, there’s no way to move backwards fast enough to grab the powerups before they fall irretrievably off the screen. Once you’re powered up, things are a little easier. Hugh gets multiple bombs that drop from his plane, as well as a Twin Shot, missiles, and even a buddy. Fully powered up you have Figaro at your side, also firing nonstop and you can position him in any of the four cardinal direction around your ship. Your buddy cannot take hits and just generates fire, but if you take a hit, they’ll fly off, leaving you to fend for yourself.
You can also do a loop-the-loop instead of having a bomb function, dodging through fire and becoming invulnerable while you do. This is a useful tactic because it also pulls gems toward you like a magnet, allowing you to collect those out of reach sparklies. If you’re wondering what all those gems are for, we’ll get there, but they’re incredibly important so don’t ignore them! And if you die, don’t sweat it, your accumulated gems carry over to your next run and the selection screen.
This is where Horgihugh becomes a bit more interesting. After you die, you are returned to the main screen. Instead of continuing play, you can go to a second menu option, Eterday. In Eterday, your goal is to spend accumulated gems in order to rebuild the anthropomorphic town from the pavement up, leveled in the war and the subsequent alien invasion. As you rebuild the town, you gain buildings that supply you with additional weapons and abilities to help you in the game. More powerful starting guns, higher starting power levels, higher collection rates for gems and a number of other options await you as you repeat levels, scrounging for gems until each stage starts to get easier. For those of you that follow shmups more closely, this system superficially resembles the one from Natsuki Chronicles (review here), even if Natsuki Chronicles is a much more complex system and a better game overall. This gradual building of power causes a tipping point in Horgihugh where you start to become too powerful and the stages that previously were a struggle to complete become an almost laughably simplistic exercise in tedium.
By the time you max out your town and buy all the additional gear available (don’t forget to activate it all in the main Eterday menu!), you’re so overpowered that it’s almost embarrassing. Stages are generally a joke and any time a bullet grazes you, you automatically perform a loop-the-loop maneuver to dodge it assuming your meter is charged. Shots take out virtually the whole screen at one go and even bosses only present a mild challenge fully powered.
Boss design is a bit odd in Horgihugh. Much like the levels, most bosses are fairly simplistic with basic bullet patterns which require little skill to dodge through. Weirdly, bosses don’t have any kind of life bars in the game and there’s essentially no way to tell if you’re hitting them or not because there’s no visible impact shift for your bullets. At first, it’s very confusing, especially on the 2nd stage boss, but after a while, you may figure out that there’s a slightly different sound if your bullets hit a target area. To really be able to hear it, you’ll have to go into settings and turn off the background music in order to clearly hear the difference in sound. Since bosses tend to have weird spots or timing on where and when they can be damaged, turning off the music to figure out the approach for each is a sound tactical choice.
Horgihugh is a fun throwback to old 16 bit shmups and it definitely manages to look the part. Most of the game looks like it could have been originally released on the Genesis and a few areas have some neat 3D effects that add significant depth to the parallax-scrolling backgrounds. The character art for the infrequent story segments is quite good too, showcasing the fun anthropomorphic designs. If you unlock the museum in Eterday, you can also look at concept art from the design stage of the game as well, but the overall aesthetic is fun and each stage feels relatively different and fresh, even if most are standard shmup level types. The soundtrack is enjoyable if a bit generic .and the game is only about a half-hour long so if you end up turning the tunes off, you might not bother to turn them on again.
Horgihugh & Friends is a fun little cute ‘em up that delivers a quirky little horizontal shmup experience with some odd design choices, a system that gets more fun the longer you play, and some noticeable balance issues as you progress further in the game. You can tweak lives, difficulty and more in the options, and even a music jukebox is included along with the concept art in the town area once you’ve maxed everything out. With six stages to explore and a good dozen or so bosses, there’s a fair bit of gameplay packed into around $30 for about 30 minutes of gameplay. This might be too steep of a price for some players, especially with the lack of replay value here, but Horgihugh & Friends is definitely not a bad game, just a fun but poorly balanced one. While there might be some alternate routes for a few levels, none were discovered during the playthrough for this review and even if you did, find them, it’s not going to add a lot to this fairly short game. Either cute ‘em ups are for you or they’re not, but even with the slow growth curve on Horgihugh, most any player can pick up and get the hang of this fun little shooter.
This review is based on a digital copy of Horgihugh & Friends provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes and played equally well on both. Horgihugh & Friends is also available for PC on Steam.