Elfazar

My fifth favorite game, Elfazar’s Hat fills a niche that is sadly ignored. Y’all know Pocky and Rocky? It’s a REALLY cool game pretty beloved. It’s also really, REALLY fucked up. That game is bonkers hard. It is for sickos, and it is mean as a mother fucker. But it’s so cool and charming! What if we took that game and made it… playable?

Insert Elfazar’s Hat. You’re the adorable little animals being used by a cruel magician for his magic tricks. You escape your captivity, and make your way to his evil castle to save your other captive friends! You have two playable characters, a cute bunny girl, and a grumpy looking pidgeon who looks very much like a duck. You’ve got a shoot button, which locks your direction, and a dash button for dodging attacks. You walk through levels that are linear and filled with enemies and traps, blowing everything away, and fight a boss at the end. After 5 levels, you’re done! Simple, short, and very very sweet.

Elfazar

This game, like a lot of shmups, as this IS a shmup IMO, has a power up system. You have cards that drop from enemies and destructibles, and if you get three of a kind, it gives you a power up. You get a weaker version of that with 2 of a kind and another random card, which usually isn’t too useful, but is VERY useful when it comes to life ups.

You’ve got a few different power ups. Purple gives you health and max health. Green improves your shots. Orange gives you a cute little option. Red has you drop bombs as you charge, and blue gives you a shield. These aren’t really as useful, IMO. The shield blocks hits and then breaks, and that can be nice sure, but it feels distracting to me, in the same way the options are in Star Waspir, though not NEARLY as bad. And the bombs are nice I guess, but honestly you don’t wanna get that close to anything.

Elfazar

The graphics, style, and music, are all FANTASTIC. I especially love level 3’s music, which is a REMIX OF MAGIC GARDEN. THEY DIDN’T FORGET ABOUT MAGIC GARDEN!!! God bless Joy Akebi. Also god bless Joy Akebi, because of course SHE came up with this concept! If there’s a cutesy girly thing, it’s prolly Joy. And it’s also hilarious, because the big bad turns into a spooky eldritch horror in the end. I wonder if Joy had any input in that or if that was someone else.

Elfazar

I should also mention the bonus levels, where you bounce an option around collecting coins. It’s legit harder than the game. I took me two tries to 1CC this game, I got NO bonus lives from these bonus levels, because it took me six tries before I got any. You can get NINE lives from these if you play them well, so it’s useful to do em if you wanna 1CC the game. This stage is also notable because it’s the attract screen, and the bonus stages are well hidden, leading people to go “wtf is this game in the attract screen???”

10/10