Buzz Kill Zero, a retro-styled danmaku shooter

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Kaleb Parham
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Buzz Kill Zero, a retro-styled danmaku shooter

Post by Kaleb Parham »

Hey guys!

I'm currently working on a retro-styled shmup named Buzz Kill Zero. I launched it a few years back, but decided awhile ago to spruce it up and make the game better overall.

For the most part, Buzz Kill Zero is heavily influenced by retro 80's arcade shooters like Galaga and Space Invaders (Galaga Arrangment from the Namco Collection Volume 1 to be very specific), but adds elements of danmaku bullet hell shooters into the mix, such as a small hitbox and a good number of projectiles.
There are no necessary power-ups. Instead, the player has a power meter that automatically increases with time. When the meter is at 50%, the player powers up, and they power up again when it reaches 100%. The power meter also serves as fuel for the various abilities and alternate weapons that the player has. If the player has at least 30% power, they can use a shield that gradually drains the power but allows them to power through most enemy attacks. For 50% of the power meter, the player can launch a Hyper Bomb that destroys everything within it's blast radius and changes them into PoW items (more on these later). Finally, for 100% of the meter, the player can enter Hyper Mode, which increases power drastically and is one of the keys to scoring high. If a player learns to properly manage the Power Meter, they will excel in Buzz Kill Zero!!
The scoring system is very simple. As you kill enemies, your RUSH combo increases. The RUSH combo adds additional points to enemies when they are destroyed. When you kill an enemy, you have a short amount of time to destroy another enemy before the RUSH combo starts to quickly fall down to zero (not as short as DDP, but short). Shooting enemies, even if they don't die, can increase the amount of time you have to increase your RUSH combo. When you use the Hyper Bomb, every enemy and bullet it touches turn into PoW items. PoW items increase the RUSH combo as well. Going into Hyper Mode lets every enemy you kill drop a PoW item, along with any enemy attacks that get destroyed during Hyper Mode. Note that every time you die, the RUSH combo gets cut in half. The RUSH combo also acts as the boss timer during boss encounters.
Buzz Kill Zero has four different skill levels that you select at the start of the game(level 1, level 2, level 3, level 999). I like Yagawa's games, so it will have scaling rank difficulty and require a little bit of improvisation each time you play. Suiciding can be used as a legitimate strategy to lower rank if you'd like, but you don't need to suicide if you don't want, since using the shield also lowers rank and the game can be survived even at max rank. Rank also maxes out at different amounts depending on the skill level selected.

I plan to release it on Steam in 2019. It will be on PC, and hopefully a Mac version will also be able to be launched not long afterwards.

Youtube Videos:
First Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yxAHooiScM
Boss Rush Preview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVcKkxGN8q4
Skill Levels Explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HSHzh4ytiA

Images (I have no idea how these are going to show up as they are from Instagram):
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CaptainKraken
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Re: Buzz Kill Zero, a retro-styled danmaku shooter

Post by CaptainKraken »

Ahoy there! The game looks neat so far.

One thing that really bugged me though is the apparent lack of vertical movement.
The game looks like it's designed a modern bullet hell, but with Galaga's control restrictions.
While that may work in some places, it doesn't look like it does here.
Vertical movement would allow the player more freedom and make deaths feel less cheap.
(It's really easy to get cornered if your movement plane is that restricted, especially if there are a lot of bullets coming at you)

Everything else looks fine at first glance, keep up the good work and I hope this turns out!
Squire Grooktook wrote:Make a game because there's something you want to exist that doesn't.
Shooting game never die!
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Kaleb Parham
Posts: 44
Joined: Wed Jul 18, 2012 6:26 pm
Location: United States
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Re: Buzz Kill Zero, a retro-styled danmaku shooter

Post by Kaleb Parham »

Thanks!!

I'm doing my best to make sure the game doesn't feel cheap or unfair, either by giving the player plenty of time to dodge, restricting enemies attacks in certain situations, or through clever stage design. There are really only a few areas so far I have to tweak, and those are pretty much in the later stages. It'll be tough, but it'll be fair.
One thing none of those videos showed were the bomb ability or HYPER mode, both of which cancel bullets.
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