Randomax

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1

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Review:

Randomax is a Shmup released in 2025 on PC and Nintendo Switch featuring a goofy story about anime-style girls fighting off space pirates, but the real star of the show here are this game’s unique gameplay mechanics, including over 70 different weapons you can obtain over the course of the game.

That’s really just the tip of the iceberg here, because Randomax has some really clever and ambitious mechanics here. The wide variety of weapons are obtained at supply drops you encounter at regular intervals during the game, which can be slotted in to associate with three different button assignments.

Rather than combining with or supplanting the current weapon in that slot, it pushes the weapon currently in that slot down in a queue, to bring up again after the current weapon’s finite ammunition is expended. In theory, this means that you’ll want to balance out your three weapon slots and keep an eye on ammo usage, but in practice it takes a good amount of time to whittle down your ammo supply so this isn’t a huge concern.

Another clever mechanic is the pickup collection line roughly 1/3 the way from the top of the screen – go above this line and you’ll automatically pull in all pickups onscreen rather than having to run around grabbing them all. This is a really clever mechanic since it potentially makes you more vulnerable to oncoming enemies and less able to fill the screen with bullets.

However, in actual practice, you will be absolutely flooding the screen with bullets pretty soon, and until you get to the harder difficulties this game seems a bit like a cakewalk. While it’s still enjoyable, there’s definitely a balancing issue here, much like with the limited ammo mechanic that isn’t really a factor most of the time.

The presentation here is good, featuring 2D pixel art ships, enemies, and backgrounds with the aforementioned static anime-style character art on menus and cutscenes. This is backed by a whimsical soundtrack that works well enough for the over-the-top action present in this game.

Overall, I feel like Randomax is a messy, silly, poorly-balanced Shmup, but all of its flaws also help to accentuate its absurd over-the-top charm, and result in a game that’s still delightfully fun. I think that some of the mechanics this game attempts could be much better-executed, but altogether it’s still a delightful package that fans of the genre should definitely give a look.

tl;dr – Randomax is a Shmup that has players slotting in a wide variety of power-ups into three button-assignment slots, a clever pickup collection mechanic, and all sorts of other things going on that make for a messy experience that is nevertheless an enjoyable one. This game doesn’t always feel the most balanced or polished, but it’s still a really fun one that Shmup fans should definitely give a look.

Grade: B

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