Howdy! Since last newsletter I played through Astro Prospector, a Nodebuster-like I really enjoyed! For those unaware, this is a new subgenre of short, highly polished, and often paid incremental games that focus on a sort of mini-game with a progression system (often an upgrade tree) between runs. I observed this subgenre in my article on defining incremental games, and since then it's been one of the fastest growing subgenres. In that article I also point out it's similarity to "upgrade games" from back in the flash game days, which I think has only grown increasingly accurate as the subgenre has further defined itself.
Astro Prospector is a lot of fun - honestly I think it might be the best example within this subgenre to date. It has a fun bullet hell mini-game (including at least one touhou reference I noticed), smooth progression curve, interesting bosses and a very high effort final act.