The gameplay is your typical bread-and-butter Bullet Hell game, with three levels of difficulty (Heaven, Original, and Hell) and two different ships, Blue Wish and Blue Hope. An additional ship, Blue Peace, can be unlocked by completing Heaven difficulty or higher on one credit.
However, BWR is a bit on the Nintendo Hard side, being a Bullet Hell shooter with no slowdown whatsoever, meaning that you have to dodge everything at full speed even if there are more bullets on screen than there is empty space.
A second version of the game, Blue Wish Resurrection Plus, was released in 2008 and features all ships available to play as well as the Eden's Edge, a new soundtrack, and Palette Swaps of the five stages. It also has a number of adjustments that make it easier for new players, such as more extends and deliberate slowdown when there are excessive bullets on screen. As such, some players have taken to calling it a good beginner's shmup.
You can download BWR and BWR+ from x.x.'s itch.io here
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A sequel, Blue Wish Desire, was released in October 2021 on x.x.'s Booth page. It was later released on Steam in November 2021.
Blue Wish Resurrection contains exampes of the following:
- Autobots, Rock Out!: The true final boss theme of Plus.
- Beehive Barrier: Although the ship's shield is a simple sphere, the concept is referenced by the auto-guard symbol by composing it with hexagons.
- Every 10,000 Points: 4 million and 10 million in BWR, and that's it. Plus has extended every 5 million, and there's no limit to how many extends you can get.
- Harder Than Hard: The Accel mode, which causes bullets to accelerate. Originally a separate hidden difficulty in BWR, it was changed to an option in Plus.
- Hard Mode Perks: A minor variant — If you finish the game with Auto-Guard off, you get 500,000 more points for each remaining life.
- Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: Heaven, Original, Hell, and Accel.
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Nintendo Hard: Mostly the original BWR. Plus introduces slowdown, which makes the bullets easier to dodge. - No Plot? No Problem!
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: This is a shoot 'em up, so it's par for the course. However, if you turn on Auto-Guard, your ship will automatically use a bomb, if any are in stock, to protect itself, so you can take at least 3 hits per life if you don't fire your bombs manually.
- Palette Swap: Plus changes the colors of the stages. In addition, in either version, you can play as a green (BWR) or red (Plus) version of your normally-blue ship by selecting with the bomb button. For Eden's Aegis though, pressing the bomb button gives you Eve, its human version as in the game she origially came from, Eden's Edge and its sequel, Eden's Aegis.
- Shout-Out: Possibly, Heaven Or(ginal) Hell.
- Smart Bomb: Three variants:
- A spherical bomb that damages everything in its radius and provides several seconds of invincibility.
- A laser bomb that turns all on-screen bullets into 100-point items, then does tremendous damage to enemies that are in contact with the alser.
- The Auto-Guard shield, activated by taking a hit while having a bomb in stock, but only if Guard is enabled in the Options menu. It will deplete your item counter if used, unlike the other two bombs.
- Spread Shot: Blue Wish has this as its standard shot. Blue Hope too, but to a lesser extent.
- True Final Boss: One at the end of Hell mode, reached by completing Hell on one credit. In the updated version, it may also be engaged in the stage select screen.
- Updated Re-release: Blue Wish Resurrection Plus, which adds a third ship, adds intentional slowdowns in certain situations to make things easier to see through dense bullet patters, and changes up the mechanics from the original.
