New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

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Zombi 6
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New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by Zombi 6 »

https://zakichi.ojaru.jp/menutml.html

From what little time i have spent with it its clearly a zanac tribute/clone. Really nice game
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strawpoll-legend
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by strawpoll-legend »

Having never played Vastynex before, I decided to blindly throw Zakesta a bone. I was shocked at its quality. Although it's extremely short, what I saw blew me away. Great graphics, cool effects, and a catchy song playing in the background to boot. This is definitely one of the best doujin games I've played, and I'm now excited to look through the rest of the developer's catalog.

Although, I am wondering why the developer chooses to host their games on OneDrive... strange.
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Zombi 6
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by Zombi 6 »

strawpoll-legend wrote:Having never played Vastynex before, I decided to blindly throw Zakesta a bone. I was shocked at its quality. Although it's extremely short, what I saw blew me away. Great graphics, cool effects, and a catchy song playing in the background to boot. This is definitely one of the best doujin games I've played, and I'm now excited to look through the rest of the developer's catalog.

Although, I am wondering why the developer chooses to host their games on OneDrive... strange.
Glad you enjoyed it. It is very short but I agree on the quality. I'd recommend vastynex (Thunder force/Aero blasters) clone and even more so Kaikan which is also on the developer's site.
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schleichfahrt
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by schleichfahrt »

Website looks like from 1997, the only available download is via a microsoft cloud link.. please, Japan, never change (I don't mean this ironically).
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BulletMagnet
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by BulletMagnet »

Thanks for the heads-up, I've enjoyed several of this guy's freeware offerings.
floralcateyes
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by floralcateyes »

Played a few runs; quite like it. Pretty fun little score attack. Kinda like a faux-caravan. Gonna do so more testing to see if, caravan-style, speed killing waves nets bonus waves, but that unfortunately doesn't seem to be the case so far. I'm probably just not fast enough.

Thoughts on the subweapons? 3 (rotating... blue balls...) seemed nice at first, but the balls don't seem to damage ground/environmental targets. Been using 2 (half-circle shield) to up damage while point-blanking the boss, but I'm not sure if that actually works lol.

Also wondering if there's more than one stage. Seems odd that the game specifies "stage clear." Probably just overthinking it though. Would be cool if there were bonus/hidden stages, but the game is great as is.

EDIT: Mistakenly identified the shield subweapon as 4 when it is actually 2. Tested it further, and it turns out that the shield does[/] do damage, just... not very much.

Speed killing doesn't seem to reward you with bonus waves, unfortunately.

In my best run so far, I found five bonus Zs. I also got a special bonus at the boss: destroyed the turrets on both side pods, then destroyed a piece on the central rectangle before the actual boss completely finished assembling itself. Possible you only have to destroy the central piece and not the side pods; not sure about that yet.

2ND EDIT: I'm an idiot. The special bonus seems to be awarded from doing enough damage to the "core" of the actual boss before it gets enclosed in its two outer shell parts, i.e. the classic caravan thing. Obvious in retrospect, but wouldn't be surprised if I still got something wrong lol.
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Bawa
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by Bawa »

This developer's freeware are really well done. I wasn't aware of these games until someone posted something on twitter and I had to check it out.
I suck at these games but I do enjoy them.
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QuakedoomNukem
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by QuakedoomNukem »

A new demo just dropped, adding a second stage, set in a mine.
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clippa
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by clippa »

Here, do any of you lot know what you're meant to do with that black question mark on a big green tile that flips over and turns into a frowny face near the end of stag 1?

Looking forward to the finished version of this, it's really good fun!
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z0mbie90
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by z0mbie90 »

QuakedoomNukem wrote:A new demo just dropped, adding a second stage, set in a mine.
Cool, thought it was an awesome little caravan style. But would be cool if it gets developed into more stages.
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QuakedoomNukem
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by QuakedoomNukem »

z0mbie90 wrote:
QuakedoomNukem wrote:A new demo just dropped, adding a second stage, set in a mine.
Cool, thought it was an awesome little caravan style. But would be cool if it gets developed into more stages.
It's still in development, it will most definitely have 5 or 6 stages when complete.
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by BulletMagnet »

Version 1.0 is out, credit to the Shmups Twitter for the heads-up.

Gave it a quick "didn't even bother to Google Translate the readme file" run; definitely most reminiscent of Star Soldier and Compile's stuff, though there are shout-outs to other shmups in there too. Not at all tough to beat, even for me, though dying at a boss (where powerups don't spawn) can begin to spiral if you're not careful. Will need to actually learn how it works before my next run.
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by tinotormed »

yup, and I just started a score thread for this. :D

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=69028&p=1467558
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by BulletMagnet »

Shmups Twitter just noted that this is now available to download on itch.io - Zakichi's main Japanese page for the game actually links there now.
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Re: New (free) doujin from the maker of vastynex. Zakesta

Post by BulletMagnet »

Kaikan's been updated to 2.0 (and then to 2.1, which undoes one of the previous changes); credit again to Shmups Twitter.
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