the hardest working mixtape artist in STG dev is back with their fourth game of 2023: AlllCall (アルルルコール) , which you might call a higher-intensity take on their Fantasy Zone homage of a couple years ago, snail_world—as with all their games, it's free, playable in-browser and clocks in at around twenty minutes long once you have it down (and I don't think it'll take most players too long to get to that point, but you tell me).
Consciously or not, there's a degree of haughtiness that comes along with participating in this genre that can make playing new games feel like discovery and more like peer review, and so beyond the inherent qualities of nizakashii's current run of projects—the simple but confident lo-fi aesthetics, clear understanding of the perks & pitfalls of lo-res design, the slightly Turb-y flavour text (most of which isn't translated), etc—it's fun to just chew on a bunch of different projects and triangulate a broader opinion that way, rather than approaching, or being presented with, a game as if it's a grad thesis.
If you dig this game, they have plenty more for you to try: on the STG front, I'd recommend Magic Vigilante (魔導自警隊) (boss-centric horizontal danmaku) or ルムガダ ROMGADR (themed minigame collection, good for entry-level STG folk); for something more loosely shoot-y, NEKOTOSAKANA（ネコトサカナー） (multi-directional fixed-screen shooter) or CielClou (シエルクロウ) (bite-sized FPS), or for something completely outside of STG, PUTTIUM(パテウム)(3-minute time-attack puzzle game) or RETICLE_STAR(レチクルスター)(precision platformer, and one itch actually promoted once or twice).
nizakashii's fifth game of 2023: HAKOPALACE, a run-and-gun boss rush with some dash-y, ceiling-flippy moves that remind me a little of Alien Soldier. As always, it's playable in-browser and not super-long, but there are multiple endings based on which bosses you choose to beat, including a hidden ending, so there's more replayability than might be immediately evident; the download version supports gamepads, should you prefer to play that way.