Thank you Manufacture 43 for sending us this game to review!

Pawarumi‘s story is nothing special, but it’s serviceable. The Council is ruling the world with an iron fist and it’s up to Axo, the pilot of the best ship in the world, Chukaru, to make things right again. Along the way, a dark secret will be revealed, but how will Axo respond?

To separate Pawarumi from other shoot 'em ups, it uses an interesting trinity mechanic that’s very similar to Rock-Paper-Scissors. Chukaru has three deity infused weapons: Serpent (green), Condor (blue), and Jaguar (red). There is also an ultimate attack that is quite devastating, but requires charging up before use.

The enemies are equipped with red, green, and blue paint jobs and depending on what you color weapon you fire at them, different things will happen. The tough part is keeping it all straight since there are no on-screen legends to guide you. There is an indicator on the bottom of which color weapon you should use, but it changes quite often.

The controls remain consistent with the A button launching the red missiles, B shooting the green gun, and the Y button firing the blue laser. If you have enough energy, you can press X to launch the super attack.

If you fire the same color weapon as the enemy, your ship’s shield will recharge. Not only is this the easiest to memorize, but it’s also probably the most useful as you only have one life in this game and no ability to resume your progress across the four levels. When your shield is depleted, it’s game over and you get to enter your name on the Switch’s (local only!) leaderboard.

To do extra damage (crush) to the enemies you have to use the green weapon on red enemies, red on blue foes, and blue on green adversaries. To recharge your super attack (drain) you’ll want to use this combination: red on green enemies, green on blue foes, and blue on red adversaries. You can charge your super weapon up to three levels.

The levels are colorful and nicely detailed. There’s plenty of variety between them to keep things interesting. There are both large and small enemies to shoot at and many of them fire back at you. It’s in your best interest to avoid their pink bullets. The bosses are intimidating and often have several targets to fire at.

The background music varies and is well done. If you fall in love with the music and want to own it, it’s available for purchase on Steam for $5.99. The other sound effects are fitting and sound good.

Since this game is a shooter, ship explosions and violence is a given. Although not seen, violent acts like beheading enemies are described in the dialogue. There are references to other deities, but not our Lord.

If you’re good at shoot 'em ups, Pawarumi won’t keep you occupied very long with its four levels. As you beat a level, the next one becomes available in a training mode to hone your skills on. All in all, this is a fun game, but you may need to keep a cheat sheet handy until you get the hang of the trinity mechanics.