ST: Bloodvane

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wht11
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ST: Bloodvane

Post by wht11 »

Very cool game from Platine Dispositif, I know it isn't evident at first but after getting past a few days of frustration this game reveals itself as coherent and very well thought through. I'm not afraid to say it's one the best shooters from Platine Dispositif, kind of a hidden gem among his works and overall. With that, here are some "basics"

Attacks

Shot: as simple as that, notably at low power it can be very short ranged with Carmilla and despite full range Touka isn't doing anything at low power either.

Slash: puts enemies who can bleed in "bleeding" state when they drop blood and gradually take damage. They cannot be attacked further in any way until they stop bleeding. Does significantly more damage than Shoting to "non-organic" enemies/obstacles. Guards any attacks - this produces Crystals and costs Blood to perform (first current Base value, then Max value and at 0/0 we can't guard).

Bomb(BloodBurst): costs one Extend and clears bullets on screen. Some reasonable invincibility. Bombing in Bloodvane isn't the usual and its usefulness is highly limited. Truth be told sharing Extends as cost it would imbalance the game if it were, while introducing yet another stack/mechanic would distract from what's the main focus in game.

Same cost - bomb or not? Getting hit resets the next required Blood to work for guard and regather position. Bombing on other hand leaves Blood reserves untouched. Therefore:
- if we are reeling close to 0/0 bombing should never be even considered, best is just taking the hit when it happens
- at X/X Blood (collecting "2nd circle") and loosing position/getting swarmed is the one situation when a bomb is good to be used but being late and missing it isn't a huge loss either

Power
ATK Max depends on current game Level, beyond that collecting Blood rises ATK Base/Max directly. Base ATK falls from attacking(!), it fills back to Max when not attacking rather fast but not enough to justify mashing or auto-firing in most circumstances. Otherwise in neutral (no blood gain) ATK values return to Level shortly, as on start of each Phase. To keep a better note of ATK a mini-bar appears above character when we start shooting at Power below default for current Level.

ATK still applies to Bleeding: what this means is that Slash-attacking at very low ATK inflicts as little damage and gives only little Blood over a short time. It may be good to point what could be an early confusion: there's no general benefit from attacking organic enemies with melee attacks, especially throughout regular Phases (non-boss). It is best planned ahead where to make the most of it.

Blood
Dropped by living/organic enemies when attacked and destroyed when it dissolves about half screen range so not much can be collected attacking from distance, the closer to enemy the more can be gathered. Dropped also by own character when grazing, the amount is insignificant for raw numbers but helps keeping gain-timers and to not go into neutral (keeps blood added ATK from falling).

From a point some preset enemies drop Blue blood instead of red, based on a minimum level upon reaching that Phase(see below). Blue blood lowers the Blood values (first Base, then Max just like Guarding cost), otherwise there's no difference (so note it still rises ATK as regular). There's no rule if it should be avoided or not, highly depending on situation and difficulty.

Upon reaching next required amount the overall game Level rises by one (up to chosen difficulty limit) and it awards one Extend. To keep track of it we may look at the circle surrounding the character: it fills to red when gathering below current Level, from there it fills up gold a second round to full.

There's a barely noticeable side effect to filling fulls but may be good to know at mid/high play: base ATK is reset to new Level at that point (i.e. extra ATK gained from blood is maintained only for Max ATK and we need a short pause in attacking to refill back to it, important only in a few situations when we expect high number spot on time and this can interrupt it).

Crystals
Dropped by defeating non-organic enemies and guarding attacks. No auto-collection or auto-attract range, they need to be collected spot on. Reaching the next benchmark gives an additional potential Extend (a slot so to speak, up to a maximum of 7 for 5,000 collected) and autobombs for free, with the extra added effect of turning bullets on screen to either Red or Blue blood.

"Frenzy"
After collecting a certain amount of Blood (initiating a "Chain") character gets either a red or blue aura, depending which enemy Blood type is last gathered (logically grazing won't affect the polarity). In this state we can auto-guard attacks of the same type. Purple bullets are always safe, Gold bullets always hit, as well as Fire-streams/Rockets/etc. are also never safe.

It is an essential strategy to approach Bosses effectively, maintained for as long blood is regularly collected. Only the bullets that would cause a hit directly are guarded and the remaining are grazed also giving Blood, prolonging the invincibility period. While invincible the "safe" bullets canceled by either auto-guard or the regular guard won't give Crystals.

Characters

Touka
Has full range Shot at all time and with quite a wide hitbox up close. Enters "Slash" mode (draws sword) with dedicated key when movement slows down, has auto-guard and base Attack key is now the Slash attack. Using it immediately sets base ATK to 1, so subsequent attacks are doing no damage until ATK at least partly refills.

Carmilla
Shot attack mid to low range unless at higher enough power, it can go pretty much up to fullscreen. When frenzy, maintains invincibility from grazing but doesn't get additional blood from it.
Slash attack directly with the 2nd key (no mode switch), therefore needs to time canceling bullets (there's a significant gap in auto-firing/mashing to prevent just facesitting everything). Once guarding however, it will continue until harm zone is safe or until blood runs out. Unlike Touka her melee attack has hitbox all around (also back) but with very short distance in any direction (opposed to Touka's long range up front). It does not reduce ATK when used.


Level
Current Level affects: default Max ATK, Blood required for next and overall difficulty of game (real time, hitting next level will immediately move up a gear also during boss phases). However, this difficulty is still relative to the chosen mode, for example we start Demonic also at Level 1 but the patterns are what they are.

Default Max ATK:
Touka +5 per Level
Carmilla +4 on even, +5 on odd (+9 per 2 Levels in other words)

Blood required for next level:
+250 from 2 to 7 (2000)
+200 from 8 to 22 (5000)
+100 from 23 to ?? (except lv30 only once goes up by 200 again, I think it might be an oversight)
This blood starts "full" after taking a hit, so while the difficulty is rising and makes it near impossible to recover a Life past a point, each stored to that point is worth more and more Blood to work with.

Difficulty:
Novice - Level up to 2, no Blue Phases, starting Life 5 (and limited to), taking a hit reduces Level by 1.
Bloodvane - Level up to 5 and all Phases have it required for Blue, taking a hit reduces Level by 1.
Advanced - no Level limit and nothing can reduce the current Level, requirement for Blue Phase varies.
Demonic - no Level limit, nothing reduces Level, all Phases are Blue.

Score

Throughout stage
All enemies have a base point value which is multiplied by the current Level (40 point enemy destroyed at lv10 = 400 points). Crystals have a base value of 10 points (also multiplied by Level, i.e. at lv5 = 50 points), in addition when collected within a short enough time each next is worth its base×number of collected in a row. Grazing a bullet is worth 10 points.

Area Bonus
Is calculated as Base × Multiplier, where:
Base = Level × Enemy Kill + Time Bonus
Multiplier = (Get Blood + Get Gems + Max Chain) × 0.1

The multiplier is rounded down to nearest 10 (×1907 would be ×1900).

Glitches
It's not like the game is all glitched or something for a whole separate section, still here are some details spotted:
- Pausing the game during play will likely break the later replay around that point, a single run isn't very lengthy so it's best just to know it may happen
- End game results always show Touka's picture (from char select, so clearly Carmilla's game could end with her picture)
- after playing a replay and returning to menu the music won't play anymore, it needs to be moved back to intro screen to play
- under who-knows-what conditions the last boss (Phase 21) may not fully return to screen after one of the sequences, it can be damage as regular in range and the attack continues but one of the patterns may not come out full (so easier in fact)
- Phase 5 Boss: when stacking enough power to destroy several of the spinning bits on sight (even before they are spawned visible), they may randomly keep spawning later during sequence when they shouldn't. Conveniently only on side where they were destroyed earlier, bottom or top, and also destroyed immediately only leaving points and Crystals indicating it. It's rare and hard to test if they would actually spawn when not attacking, I couldn't yet.
- Phase 15 Boss can be speed-killed so fast (possibly only with Carmilla this fast) that after destroyed the game reconsiders for a century (several seconds) before showing the results screen. It will show up sooner or later, no need to worry but probably takes a bit of the Time Bonus.

Miscellaneous

• Hit/Bomb - invincibility from it immediately wears off upon drawing sword (Touka) or just slashing (Carmilla), this one is actually quite important to know to not get killed more than needed. Regular Shot is fine.

• Phase 5 Boss - timing out here on the very first attack segment is be a better strategy on high difficulties for blood gain and rising level.

• Phase 9 Boss - the snake (as I call it but it flies around and breaths fire so if people ask tell 'em you slayed a dragon). The biggest blood "tank" throughout the run, it can easily make for 1/3 of the entire score by simply staying in the middle and controlled attacking to gain as much blood as possible. It may also be a good source of crystals by staying back while not frenzy and blocking the purple bullet stream.

• Phase 15 Boss - the stone and second biggest blood tank to gather resources for final levels. This is however more difficult with Carmilla as she cannot automatically stay on guard while maneuvering through the labyrinth. In most case she may end up loosing more than gaining and should consider speed killing. Touka on the other hand should always time out on higher difficulties for higher score and level.

• Phase 19 Boss - gives a choice (although realistically it's more like a lottery) what combination of attacks will follow. The sequence starts idle, throws out the blue bullet circle followed by a circulating set of 6 glyphs in various colors. Which ones are shot defines next attack with a nice beeb confirmation sound. Not shooting will continue with the blue circle indefinitely, draining out blood reserves to block it.

• Phase 21 Boss (last) - timing out here results in an Instant Kill attack (all with a "Destroy" sign flashing Guilty Gear style). This is not to put pressure on time which is enough, it takes a dedicated effort to make it run out. Rather it makes the final segment attack inevitable to finish the run.
It involves facing both red and blue flame attacks from all directions and the Boss randomly warping throughout the screen leaving purple bullets (insignificant if we maintain Frenzy). Randomly the boss appears in front where we can only counter with a fast enough melee attack. For this Carmilla has it much easier in that she can attack with just one button press, Touka on the other hand needs to press two because the boss won't leap as long she stays in slash mode.
Last edited by wht11 on Tue Jun 01, 2021 12:15 am, edited 9 times in total.
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