Put on your bunny ears and go to bullet hell in indie metroidvania Tevi

A recent indie release out of Japan is getting positive buzz. Tevi, a combination bullet hell-metroidvania-RPG, stands out among the genre with not just interesting and novel gameplay mechanics but an emphasis on a longer story and the kind of flashy character design you expect from a Japanese release.

The game's primary conceit is that Tevi's gear is all about melee, while her supporting cast dishes out ranged magical attacks and buffs from alongside her. The boss fights are big, bombastic, and wild, requiring deep understanding of the enemies' attack patterns and a quick finger on the dodge keys to avoid waves of lasers and glowing projectiles. To counter this you need to keep up the pressure, forcing them into a vulnerable broken state via consistent attacks.

Tevi incorporates a lot of RPG elements, with 300-some pieces of gear to discover and upgrade via a flexible system of equippable sigils. While boss fights are the keystone of Tevi, it's not a boss rush game—there's a lot of story and exploration as well. Early reviewers even seem to say that it does, at times, emphasize a story and objective-driven nature over the exploration of a Metroidvania, though there are still secrets to find.

Tevi's already getting really positive responses from early players, with 92% positive of 785 reviews on Steam as of press time. As for why the protagonist is wearing bunny ears? Apparently it's the signature of creator GemaYue, who just really likes rabbits.

The game's developer is GemaYue's team CreSpirit, who got positive buzz in the niche community of bullet hells and metroidvanias with their 2016 release Rabi-Ribi, which a lot of players describe as one of those games that's fun enough as you first play it, but becomes a punishing masochistic delight on high post-game difficulties.

You can find out more on Tevi's quite pretty official website, and find Tevi on Steam, where it's $30 US.

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Cute pixel art from bullet hell metroidvania game Tevi — (Image credit: CreSpirit)

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.