Kaguya is a bullet hell built by someone who admits they are bad at bullet hells
Flypot's vertical shooter Kaguya is pitched at people the genre usually scares off, with a gentler curve, six stages and a fully voiced double act. A playtest is up now, but its two announced release windows do not agree.
Shoot 'em ups are not short of games that want to punish you. Kaguya, from Japanese developer Flypot, is trying the opposite: a vertical-scrolling bullet hell whose own Steam page opens with "Not a regular shmup player? No worries!" Gematsu picked up the announcement this week.
A kinder bullet hell
The hook is stated plainly in the game's own description: it was made by a developer who loves bullet hells but is not great at them, so it is built around a gentler difficulty curve. There are six planned stages, bombs and power shots, and three difficulty modes running from Normal up through Hard to Hell, so the ceiling is still there if you want it.
The other unusual choice is how much talking there is. Pilots Akari Mikado and Akane Hiiragi are fully voiced and chat their way through fights against an armada of AI machines, with a Library Mode for replaying dialogue at your own pace afterwards.
When it is out is unclear
This is where the two sources split. Gematsu reports a 2027 launch and names AMATA Games as publisher; Steam's own listing says 2026 and credits Flypot as both developer and publisher. There is a playtest build live, and Flypot notes it currently supports Xbox and other X-Input controllers only. Neither the studio nor AMATA has published anything reconciling the two windows.
Why it matters
The genre's reputation for hostility keeps a lot of people out of it, and a shmup that treats accessibility as the point rather than an options-menu afterthought is worth knowing about. Just do not plan your calendar around its release window yet.