Dezatopia!! Dezatopic (HEY!! x Hanaji)

[Special World]

Formerly known as Momoiro Underground, Dezatopia is a hori shooter by HEY, creator of the super lovely Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo.

Slated for Steam release Feb 1st 2020, and on Nintendo Switch... shortly thereafter. HEY!! YEAH!!

Strange and unusual creatures inhabited Earth’s underground, beyond the reach of sunlight and human eyes. This was until Momoko, a fashion-obsessed high school girl, accidentally discovered them. Together, they plotted to combine the civilizations above and below the surface to create a new world: Dezatopia.

Akane and Aoba, two of Momoko’s schoolmates, were hired to help start construction of the towering subterranean bridge. However, on the verge of completion, they discovered the extent of her plans and decided to sabotage the operation. Their only hope of repelling the waves of beasts loyal to their human queen is their work ship, the Speleological Fighter Pink Aurora.

An expansive, detailed world filled with intense thrills and colorful characters await you. Feel it for yourself -- anytime and anywhere.

Pictures of gameplay and GORDON!!:

Spoiler

Alternately, we can continue to use the Momoiro Underground topic. But if so, let's have a rename, please!

[blossom]

I don't know to what extent, and for all we know most of this will be undocumented for years until someone finds them, but I've heard Dezatopia will have gameplay changes - for example, rank can now go up to 1000?

[Special World]

Yeah, there are some gameplay tweaks and more soundtrack by HEY, which imo can only be a good thing because Mecha Ritz's OST slays.

CStarFlare made some good observations about differences he's noticed already:

Spoiler

I went back and took a closer look at the Dezotopia trailer.

Most interestingly, the Routes appear to be different. Dezotopia's Route A goes

Ocean 1 > Forest 2 > Mountain 3 > City X1 > City 4

The Route A stage order in Momoiro is City 1 > Ocean 2 > Forest 3 > Mountain X1

You'll notice that Dezo has an extra stage in its order - Momoiro's routes typically include a stage from an area is immediately followed by that area's B stage. Four times, then stages 9 - 12 are always the Tower. However, Dezo's route has 5 stages listed - either the pattern of playing pairs of stages from an area has changed, or the route length is no longer the same. That's potentially painful as a run is already 45 minutes long!

Or, maybe back third of the game is different. Not all routes have 5 stages; the Flat routes show 4 stages and presumably the routes with all stages from 2 areas will return. The site does advertise 21 routes, so I don't expect we'll get to go all the way to Z this time, either.

The Route select screen shows stats: clear count, high score, best time, max rank. The last three have a letter grade next to them. This screen also has different blurbs at the bottom of each route's screen. They appear to be conditions of some sort - the trailer does say you can unlock secret levels through skill, so this is probably connected to that.

There's a section where there's just white walls and the route name I - it looks too plain to actually be a new level, but it could be a new attract mode.

The title screen music appears to be unchanged. And some of the rest of it sounds familiar? I guess that shows you how closely I'm paying attention to Momoiro's music.

I haven't been seeing all of the activity on the Dezatopia twitter account apparently. Some stuff that's been posted since the announcement:



Box Art. It's kind of uh

Other info:

- They'll be showing the game off at the Digige (Digital Game?) Expo on 11/17. From what I can tell it is meant to be essentially the final build. They decline to provide a release date, however.
- People who stop by to play will be given a "Stuff Book" containing info, illustrations and short stories. I haven't gone back to compare but I think the samples they show are different than what is in the Momoiro book, though it looks to be along the same lines.
- It looks like a physical edition of Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo + OST will also be available. A future run of this isn't guaranteed so they suggest getting it if you want it.
- They're also selling little clay (?) figurines of one of the Dezatopia bosses. It's cute and only 200 yen.

If anyone is going, I'd love to get my hands on that stuff!

Other Twitter info:
- This video shows bullet cancel chips being sucked up from a a long way a way vs. most of them just fading like in Momoiro - this could be an interesting milking opportunity, though it always depends on whether you're able to cancel enough bullets to offset the time penalty. Likely it will simply make other milking opportunities more lucrative.
- Hidden items which only contributed to your money in Momoiro seem to have been replaced with different items - Speed Up is shown here, and a Music item (for unlocking sound test tracks presumably) is shown in another screenshot. (The autotranslated text here might imply that which shot you use has an impact on what spawns? I might be reading too much into machine translated words, though) They no longer add to your money, and you have to shoo the spot to uncover instead of overing over them. This would make building your money much harder in Dezatopia, except....
- These boxes give WAAAAY more money in this video than they would in Momoiro, which suggests that crystals appear in much higher volumes. (It also doesn't let you buy health if you've already maxed your health bar - in Momoiro, doing so just added the cost to your Score)
- The above hidden item video shows that the game speed is now controlled by items you find rather than being manually adjusted. No indication of whether faster game speed has any new compensations from a scoring standpoint.
- The flowers you grow with the water weapon look different now! They seem mechanically the same though.
- Other recent posts showed off the Museum, where items can be unlocked by playing the game over and over. (I might be mistaken, but I seem to see a Music icon where a hidden money item would normally be - I hope it still adds money!). This includes the sound test (which contains several tracks from Momoiro, so maybe Hey had already contributed quite a lot to Momoiro's original soundtrack).

[Stanshall]

Very very much looking forward to this on the Switch, and Mecha Ritz when that comes! Nothing more insightful than that to add for the moment but looking forward to reporting back.

[MathU]

This better have a DRM-free release eventually. I still play MECHA Ritz regularly.

[CStarFlare]

It’s also been confirmed that rank goes up to 1,000 this time (vs a max of 500 in Monoiro).

I have no idea when the game actually drops. Steam said 2/1, then 1/24, and now 1/23. I think I will sadly be travelling if it releases this week which means I won’t be able to immediately give it a go.

[blackoak]

Yeah, there are some gameplay tweaks and more soundtrack by HEY, which imo can only be a good thing because Mecha Ritz's OST slays.

Oh nice, I didn't know HEY did the soundtrack "re-write" for this himself. Mecha Ritz has one of the best OSTs I've ever heard in a shmup. "Fresh Seafood Bowl" is a particular favorite. Unique melodies and they all mesh nicely with the sound effects and game flow. This guy makes great games ofc but I think he could do game music full-time and I'd be thrilled.

Well, I guess that moves Dezatopia onto my must-try shortlist, hehe

[Special World]

I'm pretty sure that's what i heard!

And yeah, if i saw "somebody else will do the soundtrack as a stretch goal," i'd be like "hey guys, stop donating money we DONT WANNA HIT IT!"

[CStarFlare]

Relevant things in the steam description:

Huge volume of content: 24 different stages with 21 bosses arranged in 21 routes.

Dynamic challenge: Automatically adjusts between 1000 difficulty ranks to suit the player’s skill.

Unlockable bonuses: Find hidden items in each stage to open up music in the sound test, backstories, and more.

Retro music: Over 40 all-new FM-synth tracks by HEY.

So Hey did all the music, rank has 1000 levels (wonder if it still goes negative?) and there are no new routes though I’m struggling to think of whether Momoiro had 24 stages. (4 per world (city, forest, mountain, ocean, tower - am I missing something or are they counting alt boss stages?)

[blossom]

Honestly, I have to wonder if HEY has problems with counting - the store page for Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo says the game has "15 handcrafted stages", which I'm not reallyyyyy understanding. Stage 1 is always the same, then there's 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, 2B, 3B, 4B, and 5B. Nine stages, right? Where could anyone get this number 15? So I wouldn't read too much into Dezatopia's 24 stages.

The alternative is there are six hidden stages in Mecha Ritz that no one has found, which would actually be fucking hilarious.

[CStarFlare]

A streamer spent about 20 minutes with Dezatopia today. Some interesting changes and you can hear some muci.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/539614599

Entry to the Tower seems to have conditions which change based on the route you're on (get there in less than 15 min, average rank 100 or more are visible here for routes A and B)

Stages don't seem to do world pairing anymore. His stages go from forest to mountain to ocean (and there he loses), where you'd do two of each back to back in Momoiro. There are 5 stages listed on the course select screen - does the tower start at stage 6? Are the routes shorter in Deza?

Rank does go negative. He doesn't get to -99 so not confirmed that it still bottoms out there.

You can uncover shop items in the stages by shooting - doing so slows you down and you lose time, but the tick points from shooting them seems to more than make up for it. These MAY be shot specific (see 6:39 where he shoots a spot with forward and nothing happens, but then something does seem to connect when he uses up shot)

Hitting Givenchy's feet makes the same sounds as the above and shots seem to do more damage there.

Every weapon provides tick score now? IIRC in Momoiro only the front shot did. Shooting may give you more tick score in Deza as well, I'll have to test that. Back shot still doesn't seem to give points on kill though.

Graphical changes: new enemy explosions/boss death death animations, messages now displayed on dying (number of lives left) and respawning/starting a stage (+1 bomb)

With no treasures to collect, money score is much harder to come by - four stages in and he doesn't get any. (Money score being different from money you spend in the shop - seems like the only way to gain money score in Deza will be to max your money at 99,999 and continue to collect gems.)

One of the Ocean stages is different - there's crates floating in the water that aren't there in Momoiro. He dies before we can see much.

There seems to be checkpoints. Which could be bad for milking certain things.

[vector7]

Honestly, I have to wonder if HEY has problems with counting - the store page for Mecha Ritz: Steel Rondo says the game has "15 handcrafted stages", which I'm not reallyyyyy understanding. Stage 1 is always the same, then there's 2A, 3A, 4A, 5A, 2B, 3B, 4B, and 5B. Nine stages, right? Where could anyone get this number 15? So I wouldn't read too much into Dezatopia's 24 stages.

The alternative is there are six hidden stages in Mecha Ritz that no one has found, which would actually be fucking hilarious.

Check CBP Training, if it is fully unlocked there will also be 5C and 5 boss rush stages, so that's where number 15 comes from apparently.

[pwningnewbs]

I was able to spend some more time with the game today hopefully this will answer more of your questions.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/540184385

[CStarFlare]

Thank you for that!

More observations from jumping around pwning's more recent video:

The items you uncover during the first stage (of Route A) seems different in this run than in his last stream. Uh oh.

It seems higher starting ranks need to be unlocked - possibly by attaining them in-game?

The Ocean 1 boss seems to have uncoverable items during its fight. I can't recall if this was a thing in Momoiro, on this boss or any other?

There seems to be a new bullet type that moves in steps instead of a constant rate. They appeared in City X1, where the enemies and bullets seem to glow - which could be an additional difference between it and the normal City 1. City 4 has been changed a fair bit. Suicide bullets seem to show up at some point - certainly in City X1 and the tower.

You do indeed go to the tower at stage 6 if you've met the conditions. So it seems to be a shorter game overall.

The horizontal scroll on the tower seems to be gone? If so that's disappointing - it's Momoiro Underground's most interesting stage by far. The stage is massively different, to be sure.

The boss stage following the vertical tower is gone.

The Momoko fight seems different.

Another player posted the tutorial stage on Youtube. Nothing huge, but it does confirm the value of different gem colors and animal tokens, as well as indicating that blue animal chips are worth 10 points and red 50 points. Whether it's possible to influence which of each of those items drops is still unknown.

Overall, Dezatopia is turning out to be a little more different from Momoiro than I was expecting. The changes are... interesting. I don't want to say I'm not a fan of them until I spend some time with the new game myself, but the tower changes and the changes to hidden treasures make me skeptical.

[M.Knight]

The Steam version is out now!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1178290/Dezatopia/

[floralcateyes]

Just finished my first run of this. Route A, died twice on the first stage (lol) then got through the rest without losing any more hearts, finished stage 5 over the 15 minute threshold so didn't get a chance to try out stage 6. Never played Momoiro Underground, so I can't compare this to that, but I enjoyed what I played quite a lot.

It feels simultaneously very different and very similar to MR:SR. On the one hand, you have the horizontal orientation, the ability to toggle your shots rather than having to tap for rapid fire (I guess a bunch of people complained about the lack of autofire in Mecha Ritz), one ship with four different shot types rather than twelve ships with their own focuses and gimmicks, checkpoints that prevent you from aggressively using your resources (no more bomb spamming to quick kill a boss phase then suiciding to replenish your bomb stock for another round of spam), etc. On the other hand, it still has that focus on speed and improving your time, it still has that generosity when it comes to resources, it still uses rank in weird and interesting ways, etc. Coming from Mecha Ritz, it's a very interesting game. Feels a bit less aggressive and a lot more considered than MR, but I guess I'll have to play more to find out.

Something to note about the hidden items that you uncover by shooting: these sometimes give you unlocks in the game's "Museum," which includes stuff like pictures and info about zako and bosses, a jukebox mode, etc. I assume that the game will stop spawning these once you've unlocked everything there is to unlock in the museum. And this might explain CStarFlare's observation above (haven't checked the vids yet, sorry). Which might mean having to grind a bit before you can start doing more serious runs, similar to how you had to play a handful of runs in MR:SR to unlock higher starting rank and the alternate stages (did anyone ever figure out exactly how that game decides to allow you to access the B versions of stages..?). I personally don't mind it, as I'll probably sink a lot of time into the game anyways, but I guess people looking to do very high scoring runs right off the bat won't be able to do so off of a fresh install of the game. The main problem will be if the game randomizes non-museum drops, which would be unfortunate.

So yeah. Only one run to my name so far, but I am liking it quite a bit. Kinda hoping that, in the same way Mecha Ritz got me into shmups in general, this game finally helps me get into horizontals (that don't just play like verticals turned on their side).

EDIT: found a little glitch/exploit. Tried Route B, which requires you to have an average rank of at least 100 to get to stage 6. Entered staged 5 with an average rank of 111. After beating the boss, the game adjusted my average rank to 98 and told me that I failed to meet the requirements... but then it let me play stage 6 anyway (lost my credit on the boss of the stage after that, unfortunately). Dunno when the game actually checks your average rank to see if you meet the requirement. Maybe in between dealing the final blow to the boss and the game adjusting your average rank to take your stage 5 performance into account..? It might be possible to trigger a similar glitch with the other requirements, but we'll have to test those.

[CStarFlare]

Played a bit of this last night. More scattered impressions/things I noticed:

I don't know if it's because I'm rusty, or because Dezatopia seems to want you to increase the scroll speed in ways Momoiro never did, but it feels tougher. It could also simply be that because the game is 2 stages shorter overall, you have less opportunity to upgrade all your equipment, but enemies feel more aggressive, and rank does go over 500 (though I've only managed this once so far).

A full game clear of this is averaging something like 20 minutes faster than a normal Momoiro run.

There's a clear bonus! Need to finish more runs to nail down what it is, but you get something for lives remaining, rank, and something based on the time you take. This bonus is several million points, so it is possible that boss milking/suiciding is a net loss in this game. It might be interesting to find the right balance of increasing the scroll speed while not putting yourself at too much risk or giving up too many in-stage scoring opportunities. Maybe it will end up being the case that cranking the rank is much more beneficial for score than allowing the speed to creep up, though.

All routes I've played are 10 stages. Some Routes display four stages on the Route select screen; these have an extra boss stage in the tower (where stage 10 in Momoiro always was). The Princess fight is very different here!

The first tower stage does seem to have variants, I assume based on rank. But you can't move all around horizontally like you could in Momoiro, and they bear little resemblance to Momoiro's Tower 1 except for the tile/enemy set.

The letter grades displayed for score, time, rank on the course select screen go up through AAA and onto at least S. Rank here might be either your net rank gained or ending rank - need to double check. It's not your max rank for certain though.

The tutorial mentions Treasure, but I have yet to uncover any. The spots where treasure would have been in MU have all contained either Museum unlocks or resources - maybe once the unlocks are all finished they start showing up when your resources are maxed?

Overall, Dezatopia feels surprisingly fresh to someone who played dozens of hours of Momoiro Underground. It feels tighter and makes better use of all the systems it provides (the speedup was purely detrimental in Momoiro unless you wanted to speedrun). I'm not really a fan of the new hidden items system (though hovering over items to reveal really doesn't work at high speed) and after five runs or so I don't think my rank can start above 250 but I understand the former is a fun way to keep casuals playing and the latter is something that only matters to someone who's already prepared to jump into the deep end. I'll try to do a more cohesive writeup of the game when I have time and have spend a few more hours with it.

[Special World]

Sounds rad. Really jelly that yall get to play it and I am here waiting for the Switch version. How's the difficulty overall compared to Mecha Ritz?

[KAI]

A lot harder than MR, bosses and zakos can ram you nonstop.

This game is a masterpiece, all that time waiting for the localization was worth it

[Special World]

I continue to wait ;__________;

[MathU]

Can we expect a Steam-free PC release at some point?

[CStarFlare]

Spoiler

There's more to it than that.

There is no money and no shop, and no hidden items. Your speed and rank do not change from what you set as your starting. Your life stock and weapon levels are at max from the beginning. You have one life; when you fill the animal gauge you get a little bullet cancel and some invincibility and either a bomb or piece of health. The routes are unlocked separately from normal and don’t display your high score on the selection screen, though they do post on the same SMART leaderboard with no distinction indicating that you played on Extra.

Starting at route O the routes begin to be kind of a boss rush. Route O has 8 boss fights, then something very very similar to Momoiro's tower 1, with exploration and all, then returning to tower boss rush. I imagine the next several routes follow a similar pattern. This means there are 12 stages in these courses!

Available starting rank appears to be increased by 2 every time specific things happens. Enter the course select screen, then go out - you have two more ranks. Start a run, you get two more Etc.

[clippa]

I unlocked a "hell" mode as well today. Really enjoying this!

Does anyone know if this was fixed in the dezatopia version of the game - https://twitter.com/msart_games/status/ ... 6921573376

Will check myself tomorrow if folk aren't sure.

[CStarFlare]

Yes, that was confirmed fixed.

What’s Hell about?

[clippa]

Now you're asking. It was something like 30 health points but you only get one heart or something like that. I'm guessing the rank was cranked right up. I'll check tomorrow and report back.

[XoPachi]

I don't know what the fuck I'm doing in this game, but fun. :^)

[floralcateyes]

Not expecting a super comprehensive answer this early into things, but has anyone figured out what affects the shop and what items it offers? I know basic stuff like how it will probably sell you healing items if your healthbar isn't full. But I'm wondering if it's possible to know when it will offer you specific upgrades and such, and whether or not it's possible to plan out strict routes where you get specific combinations of upgrades by specific points in the run.

[clippa]

There it is, sorry for the delay, didn't get a chance to fire this up yesterday. Just in case the pic ever disappears

"Hell - Start with 30 lives but your ship's HP is locked at 1.
You also will NOT enter the Tower regardless if the conditions are met."

[CStarFlare]

I've spent about 8 hours with Dezatopia now.

Rank eventually causes uncollected animal tokens to turn into suicide bullets once you hit the Nightmare ranks. Combined with lower collection radius for the tokens this is a really bad time. High rank also makes the randomness of the shop a MUCH bigger problem - if you're limping along to your next shop and don't get any bombs or life you there's a good chance you're just done.

Rank is hugely worth increasing though. In my last U run I got almost 6 million points from rank alone (Max 825, Avg 718). Extra lives give 200k each, which is not huge; the time bonus on my U run was only 1.27M which implies that it might still be worth suicide milking certain targets - certainly it's not as lucrative when you lose 200k+time penalty for it, but if you can get 700k per life against Momoko it's probably still worth it. On the other hand, good luck suicide milking Momoko at high rank.

The more I play the less I like the tower requirements; they’re really restrictive in some cases and not at all in others. I wish they were removed from subsequent runs after achieving them once. Any route that requires you not to die makes playing at high rank really frustrating - you're really reliant on good luck as well as your skills, and I wonder if there's a point at which even that's not enough. Certainly the game is not designed to be fair or even possible at all times - Rank 999 Hell Mode will never be a thing.

I've also run into a couple of bugs:

The screen occasionally goes black during boss fights except your ship and HUD, but enemy and bullet hit boxes are still active. Similarly, being vulnerable to damage during the boss's intro is bullshit as their picture covers the screen (especially bad on City 4).

Occasionally I feel like my ship slows down - like I’ve got several guns out, but even when I don’t. It causes real issues.

[XoPachi]

Not gonna lie, this game is...annoying. So much visual junk and intentionally weird quirks. Enemies spawning actually on top of you in small squeezes. Lot of hard to see hazards. It's not terrible, but I don't think I'll put much time into this.