A Handcrafted Arcade Shooter
Eigengrau is a top-down twin stick shooter with bullet hell patterns and a retro look. The game takes you across burning mountains, frozen plains, below the ocean, and outer space, as you collect ancient fragments of mysterious origin while the world falls into darkness. There are more than 50 handcrafted arcade stages, 10 challenging bosses, and 8.5 areas to cross. Each stage is built to introduce an idea, push it further, and then twist it, so the shooting and dodging you start with keeps changing into something else: swinging around enemies, hiding in the dark, jumping through space and time, rotating with the environment, and avoiding tricky obstacles.
Playing Together
Local co-op lets you play with a friend on the same computer. The co-op mode changes how some of the stages work and feel, so stages you know from singleplayer play differently when you are both in them. You can support one another, or not. Remote Play Together is also listed as a Steam feature for this game.
Settings Worth Checking First
Eigengrau is tagged as difficult, but it gives you a lot of control over that. You can change difficulty and game speed, equip a shield, practice individual stages to find the best strategy, or play everything at once in Classic Mode. You can also disable unwanted effects, adjust the interface, rotate the screen (Tate), and remap controls. For scoring, stages track time, multiplier, and highscore, with additional tasks for bonus points and a highest medal to aim for in each stage. Trophies and achievements are tied to turning the rules upside down and thinking outside the box.