The world can always do with more cute-’em-ups. Shmups are all well and good, but trade the spaceships and gritty sci-fi for adorable characters and bright, playful colours and you get magic—as the TwinBees and Cottons of this world have proven time and again. It’s that tradition that Hazelnut Hex slides right into: a pastel-coloured shmup about a young witch’s quest to save breakfast.
It looks delightful—just look at this trailer! Not just a lovely art style, but a fun little story about a curse that’s made all the breakfast on the island disappear, a witch who rides a spoon and shoots lasers from her fingertips, and lots of bullets. All the right notes.
From the Nintendo eShop description, it sounds like a classic arcade-style shoot-’em-up, with “five colourful stages jam-packed dangerous enemies, dense bullet patterns, and ruthless bosses”. There’s no Cave-style focus movement, so don’t expect that level of bullet hell, but the glimpses shown in the trailer nonetheless tease some exciting boss fights with fun attacks to dodge, and a bullet-cancelling system of some sort.
The best part is that it’s not far away: Hazelnut Hex is coming to Switch and PC on October 1, and it looks like something that anyone who likes shmups and/or cute things should look forward to.