Strania-The Stella Machina announced for steam (Out Now)

[Despatche]

So a LOT of people are getting constant crashing by even so much as running the game. Apparently something with the sound effects doesn't work too well on a lot of setups. For the time being, you can stop the crashing by setting the sound volume to 0, completely disabling sounds.

[Aleksei]

Ah, okay. That's a MASSIVE disappointment.

I really feel like online play could do a lot for a shmup with casual players. It's a damn shame it's so hard to set up or no-one bothers.

Change Air Blade ever?

I've also saved my Border Down cherry in hopes of news like this G.Rev port.

[Jeneki]

Having fun with this now. That first boss explosion, plus the in-game fonts, give me serious Under Defeat vibes. The weapons are cool to mix and match since the level design gives good reasons to switch them up. Yeah, I think I like this game.

[Blackbird]

Don't forget to leave reviews for them! Last I checked, they only had 3, and it really helps with Valve search results if a game has a lot of positive reviews.

[NeoStrayCat]

Don't forget to leave reviews for them! Last I checked, they only had 3, and it really helps with Valve search results if a game has a lot of positive reviews.

Yep, well, make that 4, I've already left my positive review there, mostly detailed.

2 were in English, and 1 was in JP for the reviews. (As of this post.)

[rtw]

Bought This year is turning into a shmup-fest on steam

[Obscura]

Played a few credits; made it to the stage 4 boss a couple of times on Normal.

Killer game. G.Rev delivers again.

[The Coop]

Ready for something funky? I decided to get this game (cuz G.Rev!), and accidentally auto-clicked on the install option when it came up. I can play this game on my Pentium 4 3.00GHz Windows XP machine with an Nvidia 7800GS card. I had to turn the resolution down, but it does run quite well.

[Firehawke]

If the game's crashing on you, I've come up with a workaround that seems to work pretty well. I posted it on my bug report on the Steam forums. It's a side effect of how I had to configure things for streaming back when I was still doing that.

[Danny]

From my personal experience this game is easily the best of the most recent shmups ports I have played. It has all the necessary options and I have had no problems with it although with that said I do have a high end modern gaming pc. The game itself is also really fun I love being able to hit stuff with the sword and shot with the Vulcan cannon, such a nice touch.

[NeoStrayCat]

I know I should have waited today, but oh well, anyways, the game is now $9 due to the limited time Autumn sale, lol.

[system11]

Getting lots of random tearing and jittering in this one, while Mushi at this point is working fine.

It's maxing one of my 4 cores out and barely touching the others, interestingly it doesn't matter what resolution I pick, 1600x1200 seems the same as 800x600 windowed.

[Obscura]

Interesting; on my PC, which is hardly modern (first gen Core I7, GeForce GTX 285), it runs smooth as butter sliding along teflon.

[Firehawke]

I seriously considered getting the refund, but it's $3. Sure, that's $3 I could put into another shmup, but.. I'd feel silly getting a refund over $3 and I'd rather support G.Rev.

In light of people throwing $80-120 into 360 games, I think I can live with a $3 tax.

[Jeneki]

Hmm, perhaps releasing one day before the steam sale was a mistake. I suppose tossing a bigger discount is the only way to avoid falling completely off the radar.

And yeah, not going to bother with returns over a couple bucks. I'm pretty sure I played it more than two hours last night anyway.

[The Coop]

This is the second time this has happened to me in the last few months. I buy a game, and the next day it goes on sale for less than what it was already on sale for. That's just mean

[rtw]

This is the second time this has happened to me in the last few months. I buy a game, and the next day it goes on sale for less than what it was already on sale for. That's just mean

Me as well, but I love shmup developers so I am happy

[Aisha]

That happened to me twice recently. First Hotline Miami 2 goes on sale shortly after I purchased and beat it. Then it happened again with the Umihara Kawase games: Had I known that they'd be bundled together (which I should've seen coming) and put on sale so soon, I would have held off on buying them individually.

I want to grab Strania while this sale is on, but I want to see how much Dariusburst will cost first. If the latter turns out to be expensive, then I'll just buy Strania some other time.

[Shepardus]

G.rev sure puts a lot of effort into their explosions, the boss explosions make the framerate on my laptop drop like crazy.

What's the "Weapon Master" achievement on Steam that says "Earned 10-dan for all weapons"? I assume that's related to the popups I see sometimes with a weapon name and some text that fades too quickly for me to read, but I have no idea how that's triggered or what it does.

[NeoStrayCat]

G.rev sure puts a lot of effort into their explosions, the boss explosions make the framerate on my laptop drop like crazy.

What's the "Weapon Master" achievement on Steam that says "Earned 10-dan for all weapons"? I assume that's related to the popups I see sometimes with a weapon name and some text that fades too quickly for me to read, but I have no idea how that's triggered or what it does.

Yes, which will require you to play the game 9 times with all of the weapons in each separate playthough for each weapon, so yeah its a real grind and a pain in the ass to do, the harder ones to do is the "Missile" and "Bomb" (maybe even "Reflect") playthoughs which the former is a weak weapon on its own and doesn't really kill bosses quick, the latter is getting the Bomb weapon in itself. Which is rarely attained in the Strania side and more common in the Vower side, that one play through will require resets and right health planning.

Either way, game got an update to 1.01! (And the game went back to 20% discount, guess that was real short.)

-Fixed bug that would force the game to crash
-Fixed bug that would shut off the BGM (This would occur when the REVIVAL option was set to OFF and the player continued at game over.)

[AntiFritz]

Oh good to see they fixed the music issue. I was wondering why it kept disappearing earlier for me.

[Shepardus]

I found an old post by MrMonkeyMan on GameFAQs explaining the "10-dan" thing I was asking about earlier:

There are two weapon leveling systems, and one is strictly a score thing.

With blue weapons (Vulcan, Rocket, Missile, Bomb), if you pick up two of the same weapon in the same slot the weapon will be powered up.

Vulcan - Spread gets Wider
Rocket - Locks on and seeks enemies
Missile - Better lock on
Bomb - Lock on and seeks enemies

You'll notice no enemies in the game carry any blue weapons because the red weapons are the enemies weapons. In the Side Vower DLC you will play as the enemy forces and you will be able to power up the red weapons instead of the blue ones.

The other leveling system occurs when you use a weapon to destroy enemies. The more points you get with a weapon the more it levels up going from 10-kyu to 1-kyu (these are those Japanesebonus prompts that appear in the corner of the screen). After you've got a weapon all the way to 1-kyu the next level is 1-dan, then the weapon starts leveling up to 10-dan.

When you beat the game you get a 1 million point bonus for each weapon that has reached 1-dan. Going higher than 1-dan just gives you 100,000 points every time you reach the next level.

All this kyu and dan stuff is just for points and doesn't affect the power of your weapons in anyway.

So you just kill a lot of enemies with each weapon. Also learned that grabbing the same weapon in the same slot can upgrade it.

[genetik]

(And the game went back to 20% discount, guess that was real short.)

The 40% off was an error. Often, games that are already discounted get double discount when the steam sale kicks in. I actually waited to buy it in the hope it would do that.

[Obscura]

Anyone got any good tips for the claustrophobic section in stage 4? Right now, the best I've been able to come up with is to play "pacifist" (that is, don't shoot) for most of my time through there to limit how much flak there is, and activate overdrive once I'm a row past the destructible pipes to be able to just bull-rush and bully my way out.

Also, in stage 3, is there any good way to preserve that one engine that gets a random gold ship next to it if it comes up as laser or red aimed "shotgun" spreads? If it comes up with the purple "downward" vulcans, I can just get beside it and sword, but the other two always seem to blow up that engine before I can safely get there, which is really bad since the engine flying off throws enough of a wrench in the works that I nearly always take a hit.

[Chaos Phoenixma]

It's possible to consistently save all the parts of the ship in stage 3, and it's worth it for scoring.

It's been so long since I've played the game since I've only played the 360 version, that I can't remember how you go about it though.

[Illyrian]

Here's somewhat of a noob question, as I am going to pick this game up this evening.

Is there always a specific optimum weapon setup for each level, or can you make any weapon work on any level depending on your situation? Obviously there are going to be situations where the sword doesn't work etc. but generally speaking I mean.

I guess what I am asking is how important is memorizing a weapon choice for each level/section purely for a survival 1cc?

[Firehawke]

Many enemy positions are tough to reach/damage fast enough without having the right weapons. I'd say it's about as important as Einhander, where it can significantly impact survivability if you go in with the wrong gear.

[drunkninja24]

I know there's been audio issues pointed out already, but has anyone else had a problem with the music simply not playing? All the normal game sound effects come through perfectly fine, but the music is completely absent, no matter what volume I set my BGM to.

[iconoclast]

Here's somewhat of a noob question, as I am going to pick this game up this evening.

Is there always a specific optimum weapon setup for each level, or can you make any weapon work on any level depending on your situation? Obviously there are going to be situations where the sword doesn't work etc. but generally speaking I mean.

I guess what I am asking is how important is memorizing a weapon choice for each level/section purely for a survival 1cc?

You can make anything work, but obviously some things are better than others depending on the situation. If you're having trouble with any section, my best advice would be to go into training mode and experiment with different weapon setups to see what works best. Then backtrack and figure out how to get those weapons in a real run. (The achievement for earning 10th dan with every weapon basically means that you have to clear the game ten times with only one weapon, FYI.)

Going bomb-only can be tricky, though.

Anyone got any good tips for the claustrophobic section in stage 4? Right now, the best I've been able to come up with is to play "pacifist" (that is, don't shoot) for most of my time through there to limit how much flak there is, and activate overdrive once I'm a row past the destructible pipes to be able to just bull-rush and bully my way out.

Is this the bit with the mines and gates that you have to shoot through? Just save your overdrive for that part and clear as much of it as you can while you're invincible.

[Obscura]

Yeah, that's the spot I'm thinking of. I don't think a single Overdrive is enough to see you through the whole thing, though? The second half of it has much higher mine-density than the first, hence why I've been waiting until after I bust through the destructible pipe to pop the OD.

(Posting partially to get this back to the top of the forum again. I'd much rather see this get talked about than fucking Mushihimesama!)