Freaking hard?! Freaking amazing soundtrack?! Freaking 100 levels?! Freaking nostalgic shoot’em up style? Freaking 5 Pheonix freaking beating all types of freaking different bosses and powers?! Freaking strawberry ice cream if you beat all levels? (That’s not freaking true…)
Phoenix Force is your answer to all your questions! With challenging and nostalgic style, you will pull your hair off and cry to beat the Mages, Reapers, Griffons, Harpies, Mummies and more!
You have Fury, Cryo, Tupã, Gaia and Gast to help in your quest. Together they form Phoenix Force!
Ok, so I started over and recorded the results. Will upload the video soon!
My feedback:
Postive:
-Like the boss rush gameplay. Makes stages a lot simpler and unique at the same time.
-Upgrade system is simple, doesn't screw you over or make the game too easy, which plagues most RPG shmups.
-Like the character select and extra characters being unlocked(though didn't play them).
-Like the auto-fire and proximity homing shots. You can still deal damage while dodging bullets without worrying about tapping or holding a button.
Negative:
-Restarting a level after 1 hit doesn't seem too bad, but it might irk someone else, especially if they made good progress on a stage with no upgrades(see below).
-You're stuck with only one character for a while. Why not just the skip the select screen if the character roster has only 1 character available?
-Many bullets are "sentient"(move in variable paths and they spend too much time on-screen). IMHO, this is BAD! Because you can be killed off-screen due to their variable paths for one. Two, the strategy to defeat the bosses and your survival rate wildly change based on where you're at or how you move...
-Unexpected bullet types. Every boss has a unique bullet type... and they usually do annoying things. Mix these together and you have some hard fights JUST because the bullets are too crazy.
-Enemy bullet movement is SLOW. But the player moves a little faster! Overall, they both move SLOWLY, compared to other shmups. This means that while you're dodging sentient bullets, you're getting bored and frustrated at the same time.
-Kind of repetitive. Stuck with the same character for a while, doesn't do much but shoot the same pattern. The player bullets don't look very interesting. No powerups, alt modes, or controllable bombs.
-I got to level 10 on one character and all it did was increase bullet damage a tiny bit, which defeated enemies a second or so faster. Progression's not too fun on the default character.
-Also I tried a hard level and I almost beat it, except when the game froze unexpectedly, and lasted for a unexpected amount of time, then I died and had to restart the stage. NOT my hardware's fault, that's for sure.
I mostly agree with Shmuppet's gripes, the biggest one being repetition. Although I enjoyed the clean and simple style of the graphics, they get very repetitive quickly and while the music was okay, so few tracks hardly hold up for 100 levels.
The bosses feel more like glorified turrets than proper adversaries since all of them just circle around upper part of the screen and spew same patterns over and over again. There are some variations to attacks as the game goes on but not even all enemy combinations seem to make much sense. Way too often I was able cheese the enemies with the homing-shot phoenix (I forgot its name) by staying near either upper corner because none of the bosses were able to shoot aimed bullets. Thus the difficulty curve is all over the place. It has tendency to ramp up with some specific combination of diffferent enemies, but ultimately the 100th level didn't feel that much harder than fifty levels preceding it.
Also I found the upgrade too shallow and straightforward to leave room for any kind of strategy or planning. Maybe there could be more different stats that would force player to choose upgrading between speed, firepower or maybe something different like bomb duration and temporary shield.
Few more things: I would like to see an option to navigate menus by keyboard instead of just mouse and a separate bomb button (maybe there already was one but the bomb just seemed to go off whenever the charge was ready...)
I have to say I agree with everyone else... I'd also like to add that if you want the game to be able to be played competitively, which seems pretty likely given you've posted it here, you'll probably want to have an arcade mode or at least some kind of scoring system, and also a couple of the hitboxes feel a little wonky.
Other than that, it's fun, and super cute! ^.^ In general the style and the patterns remind me a bit of Librasphere. My favourite character is Cryo, he's so sexy ^-^
Do I really need to play the extra stage 1000 times though?
I showed the game to a friend and he played it WAY more than I did! He beat all 100 levels. Here's his feedback...
"The game has no logic other than just crap all over the screen, you bust your ass for nothing. It does not challenge your skills. Rather than creating new challenging difficulties, the game simply mashes the bosses together to be freaking hard just because.
Seriously half the time I'm in the top corner doing 2 damage every like 1 minute just to kill things because you can not stay alive on 95% of the stage.
Level 90 was ridiculous, but level 100? Absolute garbage.
In short I went from enjoying the game, to hating it in one day."
I'm gonna be playing the game some more and trying to get to level 100, to see the difficulty for myself.
EDIT: I've also played as the first 4 characters. Basically, there's little value between them all. You could actually just have ONE character, throw in a focus button/bombs and you're good. Little reason to have or use multiple characters. You could just have one character with different skills to choose from(like wider range or more powerful bullets). That would actually make the upgrading/character investment more fun.
Also, you're asking players to dodge bullets of multiple types and patterns/movements. In that case, the player's hitbox needs to be slightly smaller, because a lot of frustrations are due to the player's average, unchangeable speed and its huge hitbox. This game should definitely have a focus button, where the default speed is very fast and the focus button makes the player slow down, probably to the current speed or a little slower.
I think the player should have at least ONE controllable bomb that destroys ALL bullets currently on-screen. A lot of shmups have a high difficulty, but this game is the only one I've seen with such a difficulty, but you don't even get any actual bombs - you get a special bullet that destroys all bullets in front of it, and you don't even get to see its charge. All you know is that you have to stay alive long enough for it to be used, and you gotta AIM it too? That definitely needs to be re-worked. You can keep auto-fire, and then have one button use the bomb, I think that'd be perfect!
Thanks for the feedback, it's too sad that a few of you didn't enjoy our game with 500 000+ downloads, 44 000 reviews with average 4.80/5.00 star rating. I knew we couldn't make everyone happy since we started developing this game.
Still, you should try the Android version, since the game was initially designed for mobile. Downloading it today you will get 250 upgrade points for FREE. Just tap the "+" button on the upgrade screen.
SergioAlonso wrote:Thanks for the feedback, it's too sad that a few of you didn't enjoy our game with 500 000+ downloads, 44 000 reviews with average 4.80/5.00 star rating. I knew we couldn't make everyone happy since we started developing this game.
I sincerely hope this is just a poor choice of words but that came off rather dismissive to me. Obviously you're free to do what you want with your game but would it really hurt to address the feedback properly? I don't believe fixing any of the problems mentioned here would affect the game's universal appeal in a negative way - most likely addressing some of the criticism would only make the game better and more varied in the long run.
SergioAlonso wrote:Thanks for the feedback, it's too sad that a few of you didn't enjoy our game with 500 000+ downloads, 44 000 reviews with average 4.80/5.00 star rating. I knew we couldn't make everyone happy since we started developing this game.
I sincerely hope this is just a poor choice of words but that came off rather dismissive to me. Obviously you're free to do what you want with your game but would it really hurt to address the feedback properly? I don't believe fixing any of the problems mentioned here would affect the game's universal appeal in a negative way - most likely addressing some of the criticism would only make the game better and more varied in the long run.
welcome to modern gamedev. if it sells, it aint broken.
SergioAlonso wrote:Thanks for the feedback, it's too sad that a few of you didn't enjoy our game with 500 000+ downloads, 44 000 reviews with average 4.80/5.00 star rating. I knew we couldn't make everyone happy since we started developing this game.
I'm going to have to call you out on your very poor taste in phrasing, sir.
The people in here have so far given you both their positive and negative impressions of the game. Just because they gave you negative impressions doesn't mean they hate your game completely. It just means they want you to fix certain things that are hampering their enjoyment of your product. In fact they praised your game's art style and simplicity. They just wanted you to make improvements to the gameplay.
Now Ebbo is right in that you're free to do what you want with your game, but did you really have to wave your statistics in our faces in response to criticism? I certainly hope that was not your intention.
nasty_wolverine wrote:welcome to modern gamedev. if it sells, it aint broken.
Except this game is free, which puts a different spin on things.
Honest question, SergioAlonso: do you think Phoenix Force in its current state as described by the people in here would have had 500k+ downloads and 4.5+ star ratings if it wasn't free to download?
SergioAlonso wrote:
Thanks for the feedback, it's too sad that a few of you didn't enjoy our game with 500 000+ downloads, 44 000 reviews with average 4.80/5.00 star rating. I knew we couldn't make everyone happy since we started developing this game.
Please keep in mind that getting lucky with your free mobile-release has nothing to do with the actual quality of the game.
It's a shitty and lazy flash-game at best, without any polishing or detail. And so are Flappy Bird, Angry Birds, The Impossible Game, Don't touch the white etc...
all of them having many times the amount of your downloads.
I was really ready to help you to polish the game much more but forget that, as your goal seems to be something completely else than making a good game.
Thanks for the feedback, it's too sad that a few of you didn't enjoy our game with 500 000+ downloads, 44 000 reviews with average 4.80/5.00 star rating. I knew we couldn't make everyone happy since we started developing this game.
fwiw those ratings and download numbers on google play and the app store mean nothing.
We have a game(not a shmup) on the app store and constantly get emails from companies offering their "service" of getting you download hits and ratings. I'm not accusing this guy of anything but it's something to take into account.
S20-TBL wrote:
Honest question, SergioAlonso: do you think Phoenix Force in its current state as described by the people in here would have had 500k+ downloads and 4.5+ star ratings if it wasn't free to download?
It now costs $10.
And to answer your other statement, yes I do. You can dump anything on Steam, and people will buy it in droves.
Get your FREE copy here for PC, Android, Windows Phone, and soon PSVita and iOS: http://www.phoenixforcegame.com/ 
I knew we couldn't make everyone happy since we started developing this game.
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