Praecantor Lila ~ Bell Spell

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Taizen Chisou
Posts: 120
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:30 pm

Praecantor Lila ~ Bell Spell

Post by Taizen Chisou »

Hello again, system11, I'm back with a new project :D

Praecantor Lila ~ Bell Spell is a fast-paced, mechanically dense and flexible bullet hell shoot-em-up about witches, magic, bells, daemons, and lots and lots of snd_bell_ring_a.wav
Follow Lila on her quest to locate her missing, non-magical human friend Ellie after finding a mysterious, magic-sealing bell in her room.

ImageImageImage

Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zE3X0qMOAp4

Trial version scoring video by kobito (with commentary!):
https://youtu.be/Wwv_0yGcaOo

It is currently available via Steam and itch.io in early access, with trial editions as well. Thank you for your support and for checking it out!
Steam | itch.io
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SolDirix
Posts: 61
Joined: Sat Sep 25, 2021 6:39 pm
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Re: Praecantor Lila ~ Bell Spell

Post by SolDirix »

I like the pixel art! The backgrounds are a little wanting, but you have some unique bullet patterns. I would tone down the sideart (add a dark filter?) as it's a little distracting. The mix of hand-drawn characters with the pixel art is a little clashy. I would be wary of that. I would pick one art style and stick with it.

But that's just the art side of things. Gameplay-wise this looks fun, but what stands it out from the Touhou games? I can see this was strongly influenced by those (so was mine). What makes yours unique? Any big twists that you can reveal?
Doing things is important.
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Taizen Chisou
Posts: 120
Joined: Thu Jan 19, 2012 7:30 pm

Re: Praecantor Lila ~ Bell Spell

Post by Taizen Chisou »

I'll add a frame darken slider to the options menu shortly :pencil:
The pixel/high-res dichotomy is intended, I actually really like that setup in games like Celeste

The game is pretty different-feeling from Touhou games. The item collection line was replaced with a user ability, the patterns are shorter and generally (not always) simpler, and faster-paced (there's almost no downtime anywhere in the game's 29 minute run!) The game's bell mechanic is a point of importance in both the narrative and the gameplay and services both pure survival and pure scoreplay modes of play, as you can grab them all to use as bombs/autobombs or ring them to delete enemy fire and merge them together for massive score.
The entire game's stages and patterns are designed around the player being able to switch between three shottypes on the fly at any time, and each of those shottypes have a number of subtle attributes and extra effects that really ramp up crowd control and damage output in the hands of skilled players.
The Story Mode is served up on a stage-by-stage basis, and if you want to play the whole game from start to finish using the Arcade Mode, it'll remove all the dialogue for a seamless experience.
As for twists, well, I'm about to patch in the Extra Stage in a couple days. It's going to recontextualise some plot points on top of sending the game mechanics into overdrive- please look forward to it :)
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