Aqua Kitty - Milk Mine Defender

Aqua Kitty - Milk Mine Defender Time Played: 27 Minutes (Before idling for cards) Last Played: 2nd of August, 2026 Wanting another summer-adjacent experience, and a Shoot 'Em Up in-addition, this seemed like the perfect next thing to play. Unfortunately, this did not complete a holy trinity of summer games, rather ended the favourability streak. Yay: + I enjoyed the sprite work. + Multiple Levels. + Powerups, and upgrades (Unless you're playing Arcade Mode) Meh: ~ Nothing. Nay: - No 3840 X 2160 Resolution...so all my windows on the desktop were displaying the incorrect resolution on every tab-out. - When not full-screen, the window was unplayably-small on my display. - Harder to tell than it should be when you've taken damage, I feel. - All 25 levels need to be finished in a straight shot, without dying, in Arcade Mode, no saving possible. - Achievements are absolutely associated with this, too, making it likely to devolve into unbearable frustration if one sticks to playing it. - I felt the ship was way too slow. - ...and need to manually-turn by pressing a button, completely-unnecessary. - The Bomb Powerup covered such a tiny area, only one of the 7 I let loose hit anything. - ...and on that note, the other powerup-giving things cycle it way too fast for my tastes. - Some of the writing was thought to be quite cringey by me. - Your chain counter ticks down at the same rate it takes to destroy one of the enemies, making it impossible to gain ticks on Nautilus-only waves. - You also occasionally have one enemy left an entire screen away, and have no choice but to lose it when hunting that down to spawn in the next wave. You absolutely-bet chain-based achievements also exist. Verdict: While this could have been a neat Defender/Resogun-styled arcade treat, I found it to be absolutely nothing even slightly-noteworthy. Those 2 “defence shooters”, I feel, did things in a way-more-engaging manner, and didn't require the player to luck out through multiple hostile aspects to 100% it. Hopefully the UDX version fixes most, if not all of this Placed in: 5: Dourly-Dismissed.

This is a simple but competently made shmup, and at under $10 it's definitely offered at a fair price. It has a good variety of enemies, a cute and unusual framing, and pretty responsive controls. As far as gameplay goes, it's a fairly typical shmup but is focused around defending "milk miners". Less irritating than your typical escort mission, the miners don't actually take any damage, but instead are kidnapped by a specific enemy type that show up clearly on the mini-map. To help with the defense, there's also a control to flip your sub/ship left to right, changing both your mobility and firing arc. The edges of the map also wrap around, Asteroids style. With a couple dozen stages, two difficulties, and an arcade mode, this game has a solid variety for its pricetag. Fully recommended if you're looking for a cute and decently challenging shmup.

It has a nice style, but I was not a fan of the gameplay loop. It's just not satisfying to me to run aroudn the map and defend the helpless miners.