Starr Mazer

[Blackbird]

Anyone seen this?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/im ... tarr-mazer

Not sure what to think about it. The production values are really high and there's a lot of talented people on the project, but the trailer is giving me a strong "style over substance" vibe. The shmup sections look a little vanilla - they appear to be strongly influenced by Thunder Force. This is not a bad thing, but I tend to get more excited by shmups that try to push the core mechanics in some way rather than being purely nostalgic.

It is really hard to judge a shmup just by looking at it though (because so much of the meta is bound up in enemy positioning and things that aren't immediately obvious like scoring systems).

[Shepardus]

Saw this earlier this week or last week, couldn't help but wonder how anyone came up with the idea that what a point-and-click adventure game needed was shmup elements, or vice versa. To me they seem like totally different styles of gameplay that I wouldn't really be in the mood for at the same time.

With that said, it certainly looks very nice graphics-wise. My guess is it's going to end up being a better adventure game than shmup. Maybe they'll surprise me, but I'm skeptical of the semi-procedurally generated shmup segments and fear that it'll end up feeling like a repetitive and tedious distraction that people only play through because they want to play the adventure game.

[Strikers1945guy]

Woah this looks sexy. The 2 genres are so different but maybe with the style and a somewhat humorous plot or something this could be a cool, unique game if nothing else? The main guy reminds me of this man:

[Lord Satori]

Oh god, I can't unsee that.

[Squire Grooktook]

I'm down with this if they know what they're doing. I have a soft spot for shmup-genre-hybrids like Guardian Legend and Xexyz.

[Dave_K.]

I noticed this recently as well, and must say I'm pretty excited to try this when it comes out.

[Strikers1945guy]

So any of you guys actually back the kickstarter? Not a huge physical collector anymore so just ordered a digital copy here >_>

[shmuppyLove]

It looks so amazing

And soundtrack by Alex Mauer ┌( ಠ_ಠ)┘ ╚(ಠ_ಠ)=┐ ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

Dammit I totally would have pledged $10,000 if someone hadn't already ...

[opt2not]

Hell yeah...I'm so into this. Backed!

[Minzoku]

TBH I wouldn't have thought of it, but I recently-ish played Gemini Rue, and I feel like if the "shooting" sequences in Gemini Rue had been turned up a notch, you'd potentially get Starr Mazer [though Starr Mazer looks more like a comedy to Gemini Rue's sci-fi noir].

[leadwing85]

i think this looks great, totally some thing to play when taking a break from an intense scoring stg, the music sounds great, also the graphics. totally backing this, ill do the 'create a boss tier' and get them to make a sideways aspect BlackHeart, lmao jkjkjkjk. probably will just stick with the physical copy tier, I hope the starter succeeds!

[MOSQUITO FIGHTER]

Looks pretty nice. I'm getting a U.N. Squadron kind of vibe. Hope they don't screw something up with the upgrades on the ship that will make the shmup segments irrelevant.

[Formless God]

but the trailer is giving me a strong "style over substance" vibe

Did you watch the interview? "The art is gorgeous, see???", "it's worth buying for the music alone". Who the fuck cares about gameplay.

[Squire Grooktook]

but the trailer is giving me a strong "style over substance" vibe

Did you watch the interview? "The art is gorgeous, see???", "it's worth buying for the music alone". Who the fuck cares about gameplay.

To be fair, I've seen even classic developers go on and on about art/music/aesthetic effects in interviews even though a lot of people like us (ie the only people interested enough to read the interview, ironically) could care less and just want to know about the gameplay.

They may also be trying to play to what the public wants. Who talks about level design in game mags these days anyway?

[Shepardus]

Besides, even if the public wants to hear about level design, it's hard to show off level design at a convention. You can show off the graphics by showing the graphics, show off the music by letting people listen to it, but if your game isn't playable yet good luck extolling your level design beyond saying "we've got great level design!"

[shmuppyLove]

Also, it's primarily a point-and-click adventure, which is a genre that does need to have generally high production values to compete these days.

[Special World]

I think it looks pretty cool. I might pick it up or I might let it fall by the wayside. But it certainly looks more interesting to me than *most* adventure games.

[Blackbird]

but the trailer is giving me a strong "style over substance" vibe

Did you watch the interview? "The art is gorgeous, see???", "it's worth buying for the music alone". Who the fuck cares about gameplay.

Pretty awkward interview. The interviewer put the dev in an awkward spot right away by asking why it wasn't a playable demo. The dev has a valid reason for doing this (the gameplay's not showcasing the game's full potential yet), but it's IGN and he's still got to sell the game/kickstarter project to his potential players, so he had to talk about what is working in the game already (really good 2D graphics and sound).

Unfortunately, this still doesn't answer the question of whether the gameplay will ultimately be good or not ^_^;. The dev certainly seems enthusiastic though.

[BulletMagnet]

Hadn't really been keeping up with this project, but the team just released a "prequel" called Starr Mazer DSP on Steam Early Access (it's also available from Playism, which will include a DRM-free version once it's finished). I decided to give it a whirl, here are a few thoughts:

- It's a "roguelike" shmup, but in a different way than usual: the stages and enemy formations are the same each time, but you get to choose from a squad of fighters with randomly-generated appearances, stats, and weapons to play as. Eventually there will be nine stages total, but for now I think there are only three.

- One-hit death applies (though one of each pilot's stats is a chance to survive a hit and keep going), and once one pilot goes down the next one in your wheelhouse takes over. There are achievements for doing the first "episode" (three stages) as a single pilot, though you can use the points you earn during a run to buy more pilots (basically extra lives) before your next one to increase your odds. Not sure if there's a ceiling on how many you can buy at once...

- Each fighter has a "main" and "special" weapon - using either one drains a power meter, though the latter does so more quickly. Keeping the meter high by collecting "carbomite" that enemies drop increases the main weapon's effectiveness - if you run out of power you're not defenseless, but are limited to your bottom-tier main weapon until you power back up. There's an "accuracy" rating at the end of each level, so you're encouraged to stop shooting at times to save power.

- Speaking of carbomite, enemies and formations drop them when defeated, and they'll be slowly drawn to you when you're close - the idea, though, is to guide them around until they touch each other and combine into bigger, more valuable crystals before collecting them. Seems someone on the team is a Raiden Fighters Jet fan.

- I like the presentation; attractive spritework, fitting music, lots of silly/cheesy voice-overs.

Not sure how close this will be to what ends up in the "main" product, but at least as a non-hardcore player early impressions of this are pretty positive on my end.

[kid aphex]

DL'ed it today; early impressions are that it's pretty great --- especially the soundtrack.

[clippa]

I've been having fun playing this lately.
I'd hold off on buying at the minute to be honest, only one of the 3 acts are completed and the "in progress" version of act 2 seems very placeholder.

Has a framerate cap of 60. At 60hz, the game vsyncs and you get horrible input lag, vsync can be forced off in your gpu control panel but this doesn't seem to reduce input lag and introduces jittery scrolling.
At higher refresh rates, the game doesn't vsync, input lag is greatly reduced but you have the jittery scrolling (sometimes it's really bad, sometimes it's not bad, all seems to depend on how grumpy the game is feeling when you boot it up), however I haven't found it to be too distracting once you're keeping your eye on baddies and bullets, particularly when you go to space with the more barren backgrounds and it's far more preferable to the high input lag at 60hz vsynced.

You can discount the whole procedural generation thing, it's the same every time you play, the changes are only visual and slight. You start with a random ship, sometimes it looks like night time, that sort of thing. As far as I can tell, anyway.

Currently you can totally cheese both the final bosses of act 1 by flying up behind them and spamming the "death blossom" special weapon if your ship has it.

Still very much a work in progress but what I've played so far has been really good fun.