PAWARUMI's Upcoming release : 30th of January

[Elunil]

YES ! Finally it is time for us to release our Baby !


After more than a year and a half working on Pawarumi, we are finally ready to move further and to release the game in early access. We want it to be as perfect as possible that's why we go throught an early access phase. We are pretty confident with the game after all the playtests we had, but more is better in that case.

We are going to release a lot of content in the coming weeks, and with your feedback the game state will be even greater each time !
Feel free to ask any question about the game , the development, balancing or the current state of the game. Even tips for scoring

Cheers and thank your for supporting us !
Alex

[Astro City II]

Hi Alex,

Any idea when you guys will release the Xbox One version? Are you going for a Game Preview release or straight to retail when finished?

Cheers

[stacks183]

Graphics, music, and overall presentation looks and sounds very cool. Probably, one of the best looking 3d shmups I ever saw, just judging from the trailer. Will definitely be keeping an eye on the game.

I also wonder if there is some kind of inertia applied to the player ship? It looks at parts almost as if it's mouse controlled, although, as I understand, this is not the case. Maybe it's just the fluidity of animations that I'm not used to that gives me this impression.

[clippa]

I also wonder if there is some kind of inertia applied to the player ship? It looks at parts almost as if it's mouse controlled.

Analogue movement - https://www.reddit.com/r/shmups/comment ... g/d9tepcy/

[stacks183]

I also wonder if there is some kind of inertia applied to the player ship? It looks at parts almost as if it's mouse controlled.

Analogue movement - https://www.reddit.com/r/shmups/comment ... g/d9tepcy/

Well, that's a bummer. Analog movement is just not precise enough for shmups in my opinion. Also, 5 buttons is way to much for me. My mind melts when there is more than 3 buttons in a shmup. At this point, I really hope that there will be a demo available at some point. I would rather try before buying, because graphics look great, but the gameplay might not be up my alley.

[Elunil]

Hello guys !

Hi AstroCity !
So about the X1 version, it will come around early next year. No precise release date at the moment ! We are not planning on doing a game preview release. By the time, the PC version will have been around for a few months so there will be enough content on the internet to make yourself a decent idea about the game. The PC and Consoles version will be exactly the same so a review on PC will worth a preview on console we think

Thanks Stacks183 ! Indeed there is no inertia at all on the ship movement. And yes it's analog with a very strong input sensivity curve which kinda mimic the feeling of using a digital stick. We added a brake button to slow down the ship movement for tough pattern. We spend month making sure the handling is just right and now we almost can't tell the difference between a Stick and a Xbox controller.

If you have more questions feel free to ask everyone !

On an other topic I'm changing the Steam cover art of the game and i wanted your feedback on it !

[BulletMagnet]

Okay, few thoughts -

- After turning the graphics settings as low as they go and shrinking the window to 800x600 I could get the game to run 60 FPS on my laptop; do you plan on adding any additional performance tweaks for low-end users?

- That said, even at low specs the game looks quite nice; the Ikaruga inspiration is obvious, but the "Aztec" flavoring helps it stand out. Stage elements and bosses have enough personality to stand apart from each other, keep that up.

- It takes a little time to get used to how the colors play off each other (and once I got to the fourth boss I had to ask myself "wait, which one was 'boost' and which one was 'drain' again?" ), but the onscreen prompts help, and once you've got the hang of it it's neat to be able to play safely, offensively or defensively depending on the situation. The weapons all feel pretty good in my estimation.

- Speaking of the onscreen prompts, though, maybe an option to make them fade a bit more when you move over them would be good to include; personally, I wouldn't mind a bit of extra visual "oomph" to enemy bullets in general, because while the backgrounds and explosions and stuff are great hazards can sometimes get a bit lost in them (though part of that probably has to do with the small screen size I have to use).

- There seems to be some manner of stage-order variety, as I got both the "lava" and "pyramid" levels as the second stage; any word on how this works, or how extensive it is?

- I know your main goal here is to get folks in the door without intimidating them with technical gobbledygook, but is there a basic rundown of how scoring works anywhere? Sacrilegious as it may be I'm also kinda curious to look a bit deeper into the storyline/lore you've built, though it seems I'll just have to play the full game to get ahold of most of that...

- Just out of curiosity, any reason you chose to make "easy" the difficulty level for the early build?

Looking pretty good from here, let me know if there's anything specific you want me to expand upon.

[Elunil]

Hi BulletMagnet ! Thanks for your feedback ! Did you backed us on kickstarter or did you win a key somewhere ? Just to make sure, you played for the early access build that is on steam at the moment ?

Yes there will be a performance update in December ! Would you mind sending me your PC specs in private so we can have a better idea of what's low end for you ? For us we wanted to have the game runing on a small laptop with intel integrated graphic card. But there is always another low :p We really want people to be able to run it on fairly low rigs so please send me the PM

We spend wuite a while to get the bullets just right. We are currently running on all the level to tone down the background to make sure there are perfectly visible is all the situation. But if there is a particular place you had trouble seeing them please tell us. Also yes , playing on a small screen on low rez might not help :p

Concerning the stage order, it depends on the difficulty level. It was a nice way for us to twist the experience in every difficulty mode.

We might add a scoring tutorial at some point, it is actually a neat idea. We wanted people to experiment with the tool and figure it out by themselves. But ok i'll think about it Thanks !

The default difficulty level after the tutorial is the easy mode yes. But you can quit right after and go in normal mode after that. Easy mode is really for shmup newcomers and might be boring for regular shmupers Tho it's quite cool to be able to experiment with the mechanics and take your time to understand it !

[BulletMagnet]

Did you backed us on kickstarter or did you win a key somewhere ?

Yup, I'm a backer - should have a physical copy on its way to me at some point.

Would you mind sending me your PC specs in private so we can have a better idea of what's low end for you ?

No reason not to post 'em here, I got past being ashamed a long time ago. Toshiba Satellite S55-A, Windows 10, 2.4 GHz, 12 GB RAM, Intel integrated graphics. Let me know if there's any other info you need.

We spend wuite a while to get the bullets just right. We are currently running on all the level to tone down the background to make sure there are perfectly visible is all the situation.

If you're worried about the backgrounds being too muted, some titles make background brightness an adjustable option, so players who are especially sensitive to bullet visibility (like yours truly) can tone things down while others can enjoy the bolder backdrops. Off the cuff I might suggest increasing the size/flashiness of some shots, as larger ones stood out pretty well for me but some smaller ones would get lost in the flash of the red weapon or some such thing. Maybe mixing up their colors a bit would help too; bright pink stands out against a lot, but in a bright orange area maybe some neon blue would work better.

We wanted people to experiment with the tool and figure it out by themselves.

Nothing wrong with that, but if memory serves the tutorial doesn't even mention it at all; some players might not even know a scoring system exists in the first place. No need to reveal everything if you'd rather players find their own way to some extent, but definitely at least offer a hint or two as to how things work in this area.

The default difficulty level after the tutorial is the easy mode yes. But you can quit right after and go in normal mode after that. Easy mode is really for shmup newcomers and might be boring for regular shmupers Tho it's quite cool to be able to experiment with the mechanics and take your time to understand it !

Absolutely, but I do find it a bit weird to semi-force players into a particular difficulty depending on how they start the game; why not allow them to select the challenge level (perhaps with each one accompanied by a brief explanation to help them choose the best option) once the tutorial ends, rather than making them restart?

[MsK`]

In the early stage of the developments, we where clearly designing a shmup for shmup lovers. We found out, while showcasing our game, that the game was actually appealing to a lot more people! But we also find that some shmuppers have a tendency to kind of ignore the trinity system at first. So we find that forcing the tutorial on the first run and inviting him/her to play in easy mode directly is quite a good thing to help him/her better appreciate the trinity system.

When I google Toshiba Satellite S55-A, I end up on several different configurations, some including a geforce 740M. If you have that gpu hidden somewhere, activating it would surely help But yes, if you play on the intel card, you should definitely put everything on low details and play in 1280x720. As you've noticed, it's not that ugly with Pawarumi ^^ More updates on performance are planned, in some areas the framerate still drops too much.

About bullet/player visibility, there is some areas of the game that really need tweaking. Today we also talked about some idea to highlight them more in those areas. I'm thinking that the kind of feature you suggest could become an option to turn those special highlights on all the time. Hum, when I say highlight, I'm not meaning more light but actually some 2D sprite that would go on top and would be easily visible ^^'

GL&HF

[Elunil]

Hello everyone !
After the Linux version release last week and a warm welcome from the Linux community, we release the last level of the game next week !
Finally you will be able to finish the game entirely! the whole gameplay is there but the staging still needs some polish. But more importantly, the last level will propose a new challenge, new patterns to learn and a new way to experiment Pawarumi's gameplay. Most of all, it complete the normal and hard mode for real now. 1cc the game isn't going to be that straight forward anymore !
Anyway guys, we're really waiting for your feedbacks about it !
For now feast your eyes with some gifs over there

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A trés bientôt pour de nouvelles aventures pleines de pewpew !

[MsK`]

Aaaaaannnnnnnd it's online! GL & HF

http://store.steampowered.com/app/610410/PAWARUMI/

[Elunil]

New Update !
We just uploaded a MAJOR update to Pawarumi ! You can now discover the story behind the game and understand what's happening !
We also made a shitload of improvement to the game so go check them out !



We really hope that you will like it !
And it's also the last update before the actual final release of the game the 30st of January !

Thanks for your support , we couldn't have made this beautiful baby without your help
Cheers !!!
Alex