Amaranthine (Now on Steam Greenlight!)

[EvansBlack]

Guys, i just dont know where can i get feedback. Im making a shmup with random weapon drop system (common/rare/legendary) and random enemy wave spawn. I need to know that im moving into right direction. Here is the demo http://www.indiedb.com/games/amaranthin ... nthine-015 . The main question: IS IT FUN?
Description is under spoiler below.

Spoiler

DESCRIPTION

Amaranthine is an arcade bullethell shooter in sci-fi setting. You must destroy waves of enemies, pick up new weapons and upgrade your ship to fight bosses.

Game highlights:

The core aspect of this game is replayability. When you complete all levels the game will start over again (new game+) with stronger enemies that will drop better loot.
You can equip up to three weapons at the time. There will be a big variety of weapons (each will have their own advantages/disadvantages).
Randomness. For each level enemy waves will be chosen randomly. Enemies have chance to drop weapon or alloy (for ship upgrades). Weapon can be common, rare or legendary.

SCREENSHOTS

[BulletMagnet]

Spent a little time with the demo, here are some thoughts:

- Just to put this out there, the folks here tend to be more fond of arcade-style shooters where the main goal is to master a fairly "fixed" experience and obtain a high score, and leery of RPG elements and other such things that throw a lot of random elements into the mix - they also prefer very unforgiving but fair and precise movement and damage rules, as opposed to mouse controls and upgradeable (via grinding) damage-soaking shields. That's not to say that this style of game doesn't have an audience, but if you want the attention of this particular community you might want to consider adding some type of "arcade" mode to cater to it.

- Inventory management could use a bit of tweaking - being able to sort items in order of strength/type/etc. would help, and so would having empty spaces left by sold weapons automatically filled in by the next item in line, so you don't have to scroll past two pages of mostly empty space to find something stuck on page 3. The explanatory text at the bottom left also overlaps when you highlight the third weapon slot, so moving it to the top might be a good idea; it also took me awhile to figure out how equipping/energy works, so a brief instructional sheet would be appreciated.

- There's very little feedback to show when you take damage, or exactly where your hitbox is, so you might want to revisit that, as well as perhaps exchanging some of the shield's strength for a brief invincibility window after taking damage, to avoid being overwhelmed/crushed by barrages.

- I don't mind the overall look you've got going, but some more variety in both backgrounds and enemies is hopefully in the works; this goes double for the bosses, you definitely need some huge, ludicrous monstrosities of some kind to offset the hordes of ships that lead up to them. Some environmental obstacles might add a bit of flavor, too.

Hopefully that gives you something to work with, let me know if I need to clarify anything.

- BM

[EvansBlack]

Amaranthine is now on Steam Greenlight!!!