Wish Project - Bullet Hell shmup released to Steam

[retlaf]

Hi guys,

I'm a game developer and I just released my shmup, "Wish Project", to steam:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/367140/

It's actually something I released on Desura a couple of years ago, but I recently started working on a brand new shmup. I figured though, before really diving into development on the new game, I would do some heavy polishing on Wish Project for a steam release and get some feedback. So that's what motivated me to post this here! I would really, really appreciate it if anybody here could check this out and let me know what they think. I may not be able to apply feedback to Wish Project (although that's not out of the question), but any advice would be very useful to me in developing my new shmup since I'll be taking it in a similar direction.

Thank you!!

Here are a few screenshots:

[Jeneki]

Is this game mouse controlled? Just going off the gameplay videos.

Also you need to copy/paste the best bullet hell description ever:

Looking for an easy game where you can sit back, relax, shoot butterflies and grant wishes?

Then Wish Project is the game for you! Sure, the butterflies shoot back at you, but their bullets don't even move all that fast. Even if their bullets do overwhelm you, just press the bomb button. Poof! All your problems (and maybe even the enemies) are gone! You even have a shield which makes it so you need to take not only one, but TWO hits to die. SO casual!

But there's always the chance you're that type of player who enjoys a challenge. Well then, just change the difficulty from Easy to Hard. Those butterflies will overwhelm you with bullets. And you only have so many bombs... you won't be able to blast away ALL your problems! Oh, and on the hardest difficulty, there's no shield. But seriously, who would ever want to put themselves through that? I guess those who want to unlock all the characters, game modes, and all that extra stuff.

Whether it's Easy or Hard mode you want, enjoy Wish Project!

I'll have a chance to check it out in greater detail this weekend.

[retlaf]

Haha thanks!

It's not mouse controlled. It currently supports keyboard and XInput/DirectInput controllers, but if mouse support is something people generally find important, I would be able to patch that in.

[Jeneki]

No, I was not suggesting mouse control or implying any shmup should use it. Just asking.

[clippa]

It has analogue movement, that's why it looks like it might be mouse controlled.
You can go traditional digital though with a focus button.
Hoping to give this a good bash tomorrow

[Blattdorf]

The game is surprisingly good! A bit like Touhou, a bit slower-paced, but still plenty hard.

[Lord Satori]

You had me hooked when I saw that horse guy.

[BulletMagnet]

I was pleasantly surprised by this one back on Desura, and had no problem double-dipping for the Steam release, especially for only two bucks (and since I want to see whatever you're currently working on). I am curious what notable adjustments you've made for this version, just for knowledge's sake.

[clippa]

still plenty hard.

I found "normal" to be a bit tame, though I WAS playing with the horse guy and it said he was really easy to play with, but come on, you HAVE to be the horse guy!
Played through hard last night and it was much more fun. Gonna give hardEST a bash today.

Any chance you could add achievements for 1cc'ing the harder difficulties? That'd be a nice incentive for folk.

An option to automatically skip all dialogue in the options menu would be great as well.
No offense, it might be hilarious, but shmupping and reading is such a gearshift for me. Once I'm in ADHD mode, there's no going back. I ain't got time for no words, I'm saving the universe, or whatever I'm doing. Hang on, these butterflies ARE evil, aren't they? I'm not just some horse headed prick going on a rampage?

I didn't have nightmares about that unicorn bonced fetus with the gaping chest scar last night. You're going to have to up your game!

[retlaf]

I was pleasantly surprised by this one back on Desura, and had no problem double-dipping for the Steam release, especially for only two bucks (and since I want to see whatever you're currently working on). I am curious what notable adjustments you've made for this version, just for knowledge's sake.

Oh man, I actually feel really bad about this! I had every intention to update the Desura release too, but I found out not long ago that they went out of business and shut down.

Regarding the changes, it's all mostly cosmetic. None of the enemies or bullet patterns were upgraded. Most important things I fixed up were the in-game side panels (and other misc gui things), stage backgrounds, and music. Oh yeah, and I almost forgot - the last bunch of unlockables where you need all the gold medals on Harder difficulty used to just be for alternate costumes, but now they unlock whole new characters (but they share dialogue with the originals).

And if you still have your Desura save files around, you can pop them into Saved Games/Wish Project and steam cloud should pick them up.

Any chance you could add achievements for 1cc'ing the harder difficulties? That'd be a nice incentive for folk.

An option to automatically skip all dialogue in the options menu would be great as well.
No offense, it might be hilarious, but shmupping and reading is such a gearshift for me. Once I'm in ADHD mode, there's no going back. I ain't got time for no words, I'm saving the universe, or whatever I'm doing. Hang on, these butterflies ARE evil, aren't they? I'm not just some horse headed prick going on a rampage?

I didn't have nightmares about that unicorn bonced fetus with the gaping chest scar last night. You're going to have to up your game!

For 1cc'ing, there's something unlockable for each of the difficulties (and doing Normal will also unlock the reward for Easy, for example). I didn't include steam achievements for this because I fell into an OCD trap where I made all the achievements map to all the things in the Tips menu. Kind of a mistake on my part there.

For the dialog, there is a configurable skip button (Tab by default on keyboard), but do you mean an option where it doesn't show up at all? If so I could totally get on board with that. I'm going to be releasing an update with online leaderboards that I could include it in. Not sure how long it will take me to release that update though since I'm going to be pretty busy this weekend.

And I'll try to step it up for the last boss in my next game lol

You had me hooked when I saw that horse guy.

haha I am SO happy I decided to include him. For my next game, to scale back a bit, I was thinking of just having one character and I was going to try to make it a cute girl of some random sorts, but I might have to revisit this horse concept instead.

The game is surprisingly good! A bit like Touhou, a bit slower-paced, but still plenty hard.

Thanks! I'm glad it still feels hard. I deliberately tried to make patterns where the bullets were generally slower to give you a bit of time to plan routes and stuff.

(and since I want to see whatever you're currently working on)

I almost forgot to address this. I'm playing around with new "ikaruga-like" mechanics to make the game feel more unique. I don't have anything to show for it yet though since most of the planning is still on paper at this point. My general goal was to scale back on things people didn't find so important (like dialogue and maybe having so many characters) and spend that time on more important things, like maybe more stages or an extra stage like the touhou games have.

[clippa]

do you mean an option where it doesn't show up at all?

Yeah, if that's not too much effort. I'd much prefer to have nothing breaking the flow of action.
Rather than an option in the menus, you could maybe have "story mode" and "arcade mode", I think that's how most shmups with dialogue do it.

[Hans Maulwurf]

Played it yesterday. Normal was a bit easy (cleared 1st try without losing a live, played the horse of course). I really liked the bullet patterns and the flow of the game. Totally worth the two bucks.

One thing (in addition to skipping dialogue): The replay function seems to have some desyncing problems. In the replay of my clear I die alot on the second stage.

[retlaf]

Yeah, if that's not too much effort. I'd much prefer to have nothing breaking the flow of action.

No problem. This won't actually be too much effort at all.

Played it yesterday. Normal was a bit easy (cleared 1st try without losing a live, played the horse of course). I really liked the bullet patterns and the flow of the game. Totally worth the two bucks.

Thank you for the feedback! Something to note is that I intended the difference between difficulties to be pretty substantial, so I hope Hard and/or Harder will suit you better.

The replay function seems to have some desyncing problems. In the replay of my clear I die alot on the second stage.

Ahhhh hearing this is like my worst nightmare! (But don't get me wrong, I'm very grateful you brought it to my attention! haha) The whole update loop is totally multi-threaded, so making replays deterministic was actually really hard, and I thought I got it in the end. Actually, this might be a somewhat hardware specific thing. Hmmm... I'll have to start doing some investigations to figure this out and hopefully patch it before next update.

[Captain]

Let it be known that the age of loli is ending, as the primordial sun rises the year of the horse begins.

[retlaf]

I'm quite excited to say that I've released my first major patch! Changes are:
- Added online leaderboards
- Added option to turn off story dialogue
- Fixed replay syncing issues

Fixing replays was definitely the hardest part since it needed pretty big edits to the core game engine, and I had to make sure performance wouldn't get worse (which was challenging because syncing threaded code by definition makes it take longer to run).

And since I just added online leaderboards, this would be a great time to ask: does anyone have any thoughts on my scoring system? It's explained in-game as tips are unlocked, but I'll go over it here:

I don't really like when shmups severely punish my score for kinda just playing the game normally. ie, Losing my chain because I shot a yellow enemy instead of a pink one, or because I killed everything too fast and there's nothing left to extend my chain - and then losing my chain would mean my score would be exponentially worse for a small, unintuitive mistake. I would like for someone who is very good at the game, but just playing for survival, to have a score that isn't garbage.

BUT scoring systems need something built into them which makes players do difficult things outside of their comfort zone to push their score, so that as they get better they can continue to push themselves further. Otherwise they'd end up casually beating the game, and that score wouldn't be too far off from their max potential. The mechanic I chose for this is to give a big score bonus for killing enemies up close.

The multiplier increases with each enemy killed, but it doesn't reset or decrease in any way during a stage. Killing a whole "squad" of enemies (like a formation of ~4-6) will also give an extra bit of a multiplier boost. The multiplier resets after each stage.

So, a player has mastered the game when they can kill every single enemy while close to them, which as far as I know is impossible (which is important, since an upper cap for score would be a bad thing - there should always be room to optimize). There is a bit of a trade-off deciding between killing as much as possible up close or as much as possible period. Theoretically you'd start a stage doing the latter and switch to the former once your multiplier is high enough.

There are a few more intricacies like bullet cancelling and power/bomb stock bonuses, but that's basically it.

My hope is that someone super, super skilled would have a huge, impressive score which would blow the minds of young newbies, encouraging them to try playing for score themselves. And when they get into it, I would like for them to not feel like they're fighting mechanics, but instead like they're being awesome and flashy. At the same time, making one small error in the middle of a run wouldn't make someone reset on the spot: the mistake can be made up for during the next difficult part.

For someone who made a shmup, I honestly don't have a lot of experience playing shmups for score, so any feedback on this kind of scoring system would be appreciated. Also, can anyone point out games that have similar scoring systems? (Because I'd probably want to play them!)

[Doctor Butler]

Those characters are ridiculous, lol

It's nice to see good original content on Steam, as opposed to lazy decade-too-late ports-of-ports.

[Jaimers]

Please make it so that you start at max power instead of 0 power for every stage after stage 1 in practice mode.
What use is a practice mode if you're severely underpowered and it doesn't actually simulate what happens in a real run.
Getting set back to 0 power after continuing is also extremely annoying, especially if you're trying to practice and the practice mode only gives you 2 lives.

Also the 'explosions' from enemies are kinda obscuring the bullets. I tried pointblanking a bunch of enemies in stage 3 but then I got killed by a bunch of bullets that were completely invisible until they were right on top of me.

[retlaf]

Please make it so that you start at max power instead of 0 power for every stage after stage 1 in practice mode.
What use is a practice mode if you're severely underpowered and it doesn't actually simulate what happens in a real run.
Getting set back to 0 power after continuing is also extremely annoying, especially if you're trying to practice and the practice mode only gives you 2 lives.

This is a very good point and something I actually thought long and hard about and still wasn't convinced I got it right. My reasoning for going with default stock was:
- If you master a level starting with zero power then you can theoretically do even better starting with full power, but the reverse wouldn't be as true.
- It makes practice mode less of a true practice mode, but more of an extra challenge to clear stages while starting with nothing.

Based on your suggestion, I may end up adding an option to practice with full power and more lives, but then it would disable score saving. So you could still play both ways, but only one would be a true practice mode. Does that sound like it would make sense?

Also the 'explosions' from enemies are kinda obscuring the bullets. I tried pointblanking a bunch of enemies in stage 3 but then I got killed by a bunch of bullets that were completely invisible until they were right on top of me.

I think I can fix this by rendering the explosions on a layer below enemies and bullets. I will try adjusting this, thanks for suggesting the issue! FYI in the meantime, for what it's worth, the distance for close kills is actually pretty long (outside the explosion distance) and rewards the same bonus anywhere within range. With this in mind, it might help with the obscuring effect.

Those characters are ridiculous, lol

Haha thanks! I think I was seriously undervaluing the inclusion of a diverse cast, and so this is something I'll definitely have to bring back in my next game. I hope I can retain that kind of creativity in my older age...

[Hans Maulwurf]

Played it a bit more (not much, Steam says 4 hours playtime, but this includes recording replays). I have 1CCed the Hard Mode with Trigger. I only played for survival and had not yet looked into scoring. So here are a few things I came across during the second session with this game:

Pros:
- as said a few times in this thread, the art design of the characters is very well done
- every level feels really different
- the character Trigger was pretty easy to control for me even though I have problems with similar characters in other shmups
- I really like the shielding mechanic; it makes the game way more relaxing to play than other shmups
- the music is also pretty relaxing
- replays work, yeah!

Cons (pretty subjective and only small ones ^^):
- the extra life sound sounds more like I made a mistake to me; this is something I would expect to here if I am hit, not when I got an extend
- the characters don't differ that much gameplay wise on first sight; when I tried them the first time they all seemed like a "straight shooting with little gimmick"-style
- I really like it when power ups have a really significant impact visually; when I power up in Wish Project the visuals don't change that much; even though I know I got a power up I don't get the feeling of being stronger ingame
- I really disliked the smoke of the stage 4 boss; it just seemed really weird to obfusticate the position of the player in a bullet hell shmup
- really minor: the entries in the online leaderboards use the steam name and not the name entered after finishing the game

Overall I really enjoyed the little I got to spent on this game and I am looking forward on your next project

[retlaf]

Played it a bit more (not much, Steam says 4 hours playtime, but this includes recording replays). I have 1CCed the Hard Mode with Trigger. I only played for survival and had not yet looked into scoring. So here are a few things I came across during the second session with this game:

Pros:
- as said a few times in this thread, the art design of the characters is very well done
- every level feels really different
- the character Trigger was pretty easy to control for me even though I have problems with similar characters in other shmups
- I really like the shielding mechanic; it makes the game way more relaxing to play than other shmups
- the music is also pretty relaxing
- replays work, yeah!

Cons (pretty subjective and only small ones ^^):
- the extra life sound sounds more like I made a mistake to me; this is something I would expect to here if I am hit, not when I got an extend
- the characters don't differ that much gameplay wise on first sight; when I tried them the first time they all seemed like a "straight shooting with little gimmick"-style
- I really like it when power ups have a really significant impact visually; when I power up in Wish Project the visuals don't change that much; even though I know I got a power up I don't get the feeling of being stronger ingame
- I really disliked the smoke of the stage 4 boss; it just seemed really weird to obfusticate the position of the player in a bullet hell shmup
- really minor: the entries in the online leaderboards use the steam name and not the name entered after finishing the game

Overall I really enjoyed the little I got to spent on this game and I am looking forward on your next project

Thank you for the kind words! Also, all those points of criticism are very legitimate and helpful. In particular, I'm kinda disappointed in myself with the leaderboard one because had I planned for online leaderboards from the start, this would have been handled much more elegantly. You live you learn! Oh, and if it's not too much trouble, could you by any chance point to a game which has powering up that feels really good that I might be able to draw inspiration from? I had a feeling this was an issue, but I couldn't ever really put my finger on how to fix it.

[Hans Maulwurf]

As I said this is mostly a visual thing. I did not have that "Wow, I wonder how this will look fully powered up" feeling after the first Powerups. Games where I had that feeling are Dodonpachi, Mushihimesama or Jigoku Kisetsukan (a free Tohou style game on steam). The powerups on the Trigger character seemed really small visually in comparasion to those the powerups in those games.

[AxelMill]

Wish Project is on sale on Steam, for a single buck.
If you'll excuse me, I'll go get it.

[retlaf]

I did not have that "Wow, I wonder how this will look fully powered up" feeling after the first Powerups.

This right here is a great way to think about it and actually clears it up. Thanks!

Wish Project is on sale on Steam, for a single buck.
If you'll excuse me, I'll go get it.

Thank you! I hope you have fun

Neat little game. Characters and the script quite good, Eve's ending totally caught me off guard and made me squirt my coffee out of my nose

But very easy even on Hard. Does Harder actually increase the difficulty, or just remove the shield?

EDIT: Also a few comments:

- I really liked the Radius gameplay. You constantly need to push forward to get in range for the sword attack, but since your ranged attack power decreases as a result, should you fail to land the sword on target you can find yourself in unexpected sticky situations. This idea could be explored further in another game.

- Like somebody said above, hate the stage 4 boss obscuring your character.

- The cast is super interesting, but I think enemy characters are missing a consistent "theme" in their attacks and bullet patterns; e.g., the mouse dude's attacks aren't "mousy" at all. This is something Touhou does very well obviously, but also look at Aeternum to see what I'm trying to say -- Greytail and Winter are some of my favorite themed shmup boss fights.

Thank you! Harder does increase actual difficulty. I tried to make each jump pretty significant, with Easy being playable by my parents (ie, non-gamers). I know I'm not the most talented shmup player, but I find myself with like 0-1 lives left after 1ccing Harder, but Hard will leave me with ~7 with less effort. Whether this is good design though is up for debate.

Thank you for the inspiration suggestions. And it's good to confirm the Stage 4 boss thing - in the future I will not be using vision obscuring bullets. Except maybe like in his final phase, I think the idea works there (but yell NOPE! if not, and I'll avoid the concept entirely )

[Despatche]

As long as Harder can be beaten without needing to die or bomb (and the game isn't specifically designed around dying or bombing), it's good design on some level.

[mamboFoxtrot]

Went ahead and tried this cuz why not, got a Normal 1cc with Radius. Never played a Touhou game, or any of its imitators (unless Castle of Shikigami 3 counts), but I did enjoy this. Using Radius' slash on bosses was pretty fun, but for stages her overall firepower feels pretty underwhelming, but maybe I just suck . Butterflies accounting for 90% of the enemies felt a bit repetitive as well. I somehow did not notice the vision-obscuring bullets on the stage 4 boss.

Always happy to see analogue support, though! I'll have to play the other characters to see what they're like, but the variety looks really good, too. Also, please tell me that the "Cotton" character is a deliberate reference to that series.

[retlaf]

As long as Harder can be beaten without needing to die or bomb (and the game isn't specifically designed around dying or bombing), it's good design on some level.

100% agreed!

Always happy to see analogue support, though!

You know, I always found it odd that shmups usually only support 8 directional d-pad. I can see by this point people being better using that than analogue though. But it's time to usher in a new age of shmup gamers!

Well, imho, this sort of thing could be executed in various different ways, and made to work well with the "shmup philosophy" if done correctly. Some concrete examples [Jaimers saves the day with Touhou videos as always ]

This is totally fine by me:
https://youtu.be/qXb284QZLBk?t=381

...while this is not:
https://youtu.be/8Iy6ucY2mlI?t=1246

Specifically, when gimmicks get in the way of tight control or clear vision of your hitbox, it stops being a test of your shmup skills. I don't enjoy that. In the first video above however, you still have full control over your character, and a clear enough vision to react to bullets in time, with enough skill.

Thank you for the references - they are always helpful for working on new ideas.

[CStarFlare]

So, has anyone unlocked the alternate characters? There's no way I'll be getting all golds on all stages on Harder with all characters; are there any other unlock methods? (I've just unlocked the Medal Master tip so not sure if there's more that give extra info)

Also, does anyone know what the wish multiplier actually applies to? The tips say "all score," but there is no way I'm getting 50k+ per item at the ends of stages 5 and 6.

[CStarFlare]

Quick bump to say that I think I've got the alternate characters all unlocked now - anyone who's interested in the unlock file let me know.

[retlaf]

Also, does anyone know what the wish multiplier actually applies to? The tips say "all score," but there is no way I'm getting 50k+ per item at the ends of stages 5 and 6.

To answer your question, wish acts like a multiplier on all score as it is added to your total score. So for example, if you kill an enemy up close with zero wish, it'll give 200. If you kill it with 50 wish, it'll give 300, because 200 + (0.5 x 200) = 300. If you kill it with 100 wish, it'll give 400. etc.

Sorry it took so long to reply. On Monday I'm releasing a small patch to add a leaderboard which filters for friends, so I just happened to check up on this thread today. I'll try to think of a better way to word that wish multiplier thing and put that in the update too.

Also I'm really impressed and happy you were able to get all the alt characters.

Edit: And just in case anybody finds this thread and decides they want to buy, please wait until Monday as I'll be putting it 50% off for the week.

[CStarFlare]

Thanks for that. I must have been doing terrible math to be expecting the multiplier to work some other way.

As much as I wish I could say I unlocked them all by legitimate methods, I just hex edited my unlock file. I'm nowhere near good enough to meet the unlock conditions with every character - or may be even one.