Regardless of its few flaws, Rise and Shine is a fun, vibrant arcade shooter that should please fans of the genre and remain accessible enough for newcomers. Its light-hearted approach, humour and gunplay make for a enjoyable fast paced experience that is filled with smirks.

Influenced by adventure-platform games of the past, Rise & Shine manages to enrich a classic gameplay formula with a tight mix of different genres, interesting combat depth, and varied puzzles. Shooting controls can be a bit uncomfortable on a gamepad, but this is the only gripe in a game that's objectively very well put together. Highly recommended to fans of Another World and Flashback as well as to those looking for a quirky and fun experience that doesn't overstay its welcome.

Rise & Shine is a good action-platformer though its main shortcoming is how short the game can be. Once you get the hang of things the game can be finished in a few hours, but if you’re looking for a challenge the game’s difficulty spikes about a third of the way in and it just gets harder from there. If you're up for a challenge, this is one to check out.

Quotation forthcoming.

Rise & Shine mix effectively classical mechanics from past arcade shooters, platform and puzzle games. It may affect the pace of the game, but manages to reach their goal on the basis of respawn and infinite lives.

Despite its short duration, Rise & Shine is a remarkable indie action/shooter. Don't be misled from the beautiful graphics however, since it offers a brutal challenge and surely it is not appropriate for the impatient gamers.

Rise & Shine's gameplay is fun and challenging, but the game has a really short length as well. Being a cheap indie game, it's definitely worth a try.

Rise & Shine really shines for some time, with an inspiring mix of puzzle and classic action, while delivering awesome 2d graphic design. Unfortunately, the short length and brutal difficulty peaks prevent it from reaching the heights it might had achieved.

Rise & Shine reminds us of the visual style and of the gameplay of Metal Slug series. It’s hard, fulfilling and funny, but it suffers also from a lack of game contents.

Despite its winning concept, all the comic homages, and the solidly executed gameplay, Rise & Shine goes out on a decidedly abrupt and anticlimactic note.

Rise and Shine is visually solid and the gunplay is brutal. But the fact that it tries to combine many elements of action platformer games into one product actually makes it slow-paced and repetitive.

The game looks amazing and is overall very charming, but it seems it lost half of its content along the way, because it ends before it manages to fulfill its potential. I also felt that the designers couldn’t agree on how combat should play out, so it got stuck somewhere between tactical and frenetic. [03/2017, p.62]

Rise & Shine tries to constantly use nods to other games, which is really repetitive sometimes. Good ideas on many occasions, but poorly performed in multiple times during its short duration.

Rise & Shine is always beautiful and sometimes funny, but most certainly tiresome. Proper balancing of the difficulty level to make every moment satisfying is not an easy task and the developers from Super Mega Team mostly failed in this regard.

Rise & Shine is a run and gun 2D shooter that struggles to find its footing in game play and tone. Small issues can be found throughout the experience, but the difficulty and level design, in both variety and beauty, makes the experience worth a few hours of your time.

In a different era we would gladly pay some quarters to play for a couple of times in an arcade machine. In this era though Rise & Shine is quite forgettable. It may have one interesting gimmick, found in the manipulation of bullets, but it’s seriously underused and is combined with mediocre action, save for two well-crafter boss fights.

At its best, Rise and Shine is a marvelous reinvention of shooter mechanics wrapped up in puzzle-heavy stages that require some serious grey matter to think through. But most of the time? Rise and Shine’s charm can’t save it from its sadomasochistic formula.

Rise & Shine has a lot of interesting ideas to keep players on their toes. It’s just a shame that some of the fun turns sour due to repeated puzzles and poor gun accuracy.

At first sight gorgeous and sophisticated platformer game, then you realize half of the game is made by unfair and frustrating gameplay. Although it lasts only three hours, you will get angry like it was a much longer title. [Issue #271]

Rise & Shine is a colorful platformer with an imaginative style of fighting. Anyway, it will annoy you more than entertain. It is too difficult and the gaming campaign has literally ephemeral life.

Rise & Shine's cute look lulls you into thinking that this is going to be an awesome game. Hand-drawn backgrounds and characters look great, the animation is smooth, and the attention to detail is everywhere. But the controls are insufferable: it's difficult to target your enemies while playing on gamepad, and good luck dashing and jumping with a keyboard.

A side-scrolling shooter with fantastic art design which slows down half way through and abruptly ends after two hours of gameplay.

Rise & Shine is a great looking game that elicits a few chuckles and grins, but doesn’t have the gameplay chops to stand up to the big names in the genre.

When it comes down to it, Rise & Shine is unable to create an engaging experience by itself, with mechanics that are not utilized to the best extent. Worse, the game feels like a chore to play, as I felt that I had to rely predominantly on luck in order to advance through much of the game. For all the strength of its graphics and introductory stages, Rise & Shine is unable to create a compelling experience worth playing.

The graphics make you think the gameplay cake is real, but the cake is a lie. All you'll find are Flappy Birds, a dead Princess Peach, and Marcus Fenix. But hey, at least you can kill the Duck Hunt dog, so that has to count for something. Oh, and this is the Dark Souls of video game humor. Take that for what you will.