I'm Rei, an Indie game developer from Indonesia
I just release my first game that I've worked since 20 months ago.
It's called Burst Fighter
A Shoot em Ups with ship customization, more than 100+ ship combinations,
and packed with modern atmospheric visual.
Suit your playstyle, be it wide shots packed with missiles, all sides attack with melee,
full melee, even change your bomb pattern.
Burst fighter is an attempt to following Raiden series, Ray series,
and Strikers series in vein. Here's our game screenshot
*Note: Demo also provided in link above
Demo content:
two Skins(2 x 6 colors x 6 parts for each core, wing, and weapon)
3 stages(full game is 11 bosses and 8 stages with total playtime avg. 40 minutes+)
In case you are interested, please don't hesitate to ask anything about this game
- It took me a bit to see the "press A to test" message at the customization screen, I think it would honestly work better to just have the demo ship auto-firing constantly as the player cycles through the weapon choices.
- I noticed several grammatical errors in the opening cutscene's text, you'll probably want someone to clean that up.
- Speaking of autofire, it appears that holding the fire button down decreases the ship's speed, which is fine, but the lack of an autofire button means that you need to tap the button repeatedly to maintain full speed while attacking, which reduces the power of the laser in particular, since it's constantly stopping and restarting rather than maintaining the beam. I'd suggest either adding an autofire button or at least increasing the amount of time that tapping "shot" makes the ship fire, so it's possible to maintain a constant shot stream as you move.
- I like the game's visual style, but visibility sometimes suffers due to it; I found that red bullets tended to get lost rather easily in certain backgrounds, but the thin "needle" lasers were difficult to see almost throughout. Add an option to mute background colors, increase enemy bullets' size (but not their hitboxes) or make them flash to increase their visibility, something like that.
- The game seems aimed at a somewhat more casual audience than you tend to find around here, since on Normal difficulty (the only one I tried) you get five lives and two hits per life, as well as quickly-regenerating bombs; again, nothing wrong with that in itself, though in exchange (apart from offering more advanced difficulty settings) you might want to deepen the scoring system somewhat; destroying baddies to increase the multiplier and collecting drops quickly work fine, but perhaps letting off the fire button to draw items towards yourself or having bombs affect the multiplier somehow might make things more interesting (just off the top of my head, anyway).
- My 3rd-party 360 controller worked fine (though the ability to turn rumble off would be appreciated; you'd need to add an alternate visual cue for taking a hit, however), and my non-gaming laptop mostly ran the game okay in a window, though larger explosions made it stutter, so maybe a couple of options to turn certain elements for lower-end users like myself would be warranted.
Some good things happening here, let me know if you need me to clarify or expand upon anything I said here; best of luck on Steam.
Q: It took me a bit to see the "press A to test" message at the customization screen, I think it would honestly work better to just have the demo ship auto-firing constantly as the player cycles through the weapon choices.
A: That's good Idea, I will ask my team to discuss the possibility of this neat Idea
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Q: I noticed several grammatical errors in the opening cutscene's text, you'll probably want someone to clean that up.
A: We already fix it on the full version as we hired a writer for the correction, but thanks for noticing. I should Inform my team to fix demo version also.
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Q: Speaking of autofire, it appears that holding the fire button down decreases the ship's speed, which is fine, but the lack of an autofire button means that you need to tap the button repeatedly to maintain full speed while attacking, which reduces the power of the laser in particular, since it's constantly stopping and restarting rather than maintaining the beam. I'd suggest either adding an autofire button or at least increasing the amount of time that tapping "shot" makes the ship fire, so it's possible to maintain a constant shot stream as you move.
A: I never see auto fire in other shmups beside mobile, but I might forgot some shmups in the process. I will try to see the possibility of this idea as well.
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Q: I like the game's visual style, but visibility sometimes suffers due to it; I found that red bullets tended to get lost rather easily in certain backgrounds, but the thin "needle" lasers were difficult to see almost throughout. Add an option to mute background colors, increase enemy bullets' size (but not their hitboxes) or make them flash to increase their visibility, something like that.
A: We tried Flash option actually, but doesnt seem good. Maybe bullet resize would do
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Q: - The game seems aimed at a somewhat more casual audience than you tend to find around here, since on Normal difficulty (the only one I tried) you get five lives and two hits per life, as well as quickly-regenerating bombs; again, nothing wrong with that in itself, though in exchange (apart from offering more advanced difficulty settings) you might want to deepen the scoring system somewhat; destroying baddies to increase the multiplier and collecting drops quickly work fine, but perhaps letting off the fire button to draw items towards yourself or having bombs affect the multiplier somehow might make things more interesting (just off the top of my head, anyway).
A: Our game actually own 11 levels, est. at 40-45 minutes in average on normal difficulties. Five life actually do fine for casual as well. and we do unlimited continue but with reset score of course. Yes, we might be aimed to Casual difficulty as well. As far as I can say, lot of shmups bit hard to chew for casual. I do some research before, that shmups genre is on rising via steam and HD remake. but I also aware that shmups is lotta turn off to casual. We do want to broaden shmups market, so casual would not afraid to shmups, and thus hoping that lot of newer shmups in the future would interest them as well. We might never reach legend or best indie shmups, but If we can be part of modernization to shmups, I think that would makes our goal is reached. That's why we tried many modernization on visual style, also tried experimental musicstyle, and finally, creating an entry way for beginner shmupers to see the rising of shmups genre as well. We just want to introduce shmups to casual. But for Expert difficulty, it is made for shmupers.
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Q: My 3rd-party 360 controller worked fine (though the ability to turn rumble off would be appreciated; you'd need to add an alternate visual cue for taking a hit, however), and my non-gaming laptop mostly ran the game okay in a window, though larger explosions made it stutter, so maybe a couple of options to turn certain elements for lower-end users like myself would be warranted.
A: An option to turn off vibration is good idea, will ask our team to try it as well. as for FPS hit, try to not use window mode. you can lower the graphic as well. We will try to push our game stability as well on later updates.
Thanks for your ideas. It is very good to got some idea from veteran shmups. We live in Indonesia, where shmups is not popular genre. But we might change it in the future if we are marked as success for other developer here. Surely someday shmups will risen here as well.
BulletMagnet wrote:Gave the demo a quick go, a couple of thoughts:
- I like the game's visual style, but visibility sometimes suffers due to it; I found that red bullets tended to get lost rather easily in certain backgrounds, but the thin "needle" lasers were difficult to see almost throughout. Add an option to mute background colors, increase enemy bullets' size (but not their hitboxes) or make them flash to increase their visibility, something like that.
I'd like to vote also, for a need for the option to lower the brightness on the background. I found it confusing for most of the demo. Most players could leave the background full bright if they want, but I know myself (and BM here) would love to tone down the contrast of brightness between the background/play field, since it's pretty hard to tell things apart currently.
