Momoiro Underground (hori, hey1230 x Motoaki Furukawa)

[GSK]

hey1230 (the guy behind Mecha Ritz) and some of his friends are making a new STG in collaboration with former Konami composer Motoaki Furukawa--it's called Momoiro Underground and they released the first footage just now:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zbboMyxi9U

They're looking to fund the game via a Japanese crowdfunding site called Makuake; they're asking for 1,000,000円 (around $10,000 USD) with a prospective ETA of February. (It's another STG Builder game, so don't expect a console port.)

https://www.makuake.com/project/momoiro/

The campaign's set to run for a couple months and I suspect they'll probably scrape over the line.

Do you like what you see?

[KAI]

Count me hyped.

[Xyga]

Looking sexy.
Do I see an hori euroshmup updated with more modern jp STG mechanics ?
Seems like there's a lot of parameters, some I don't recall seeing together like health bar and rank. Wat.

[JohnsonHanaji]

Really excited to see the Makuake campaign begin! I've been seeing the WIP screenshots on Twitter and can't wait to see more gameplay footage with the music behind it.

[JohnsonHanaji]

Well, that was quick. Momoiro Underground's campaign has already reached its goal with 59 days to spare!

[kid aphex]

Looks amazing.

[GSK]

I don't know if anyone's still following this but it was completed right on schedule and the initial physical release (and soundtrack) will be released at Tokyo Game Music Show at the end of the month.

[Special World]

Looks fiddly but fun. I'm excited.

[Despatche]

Mad respect to whoever over there thinks these games are worth a bit. It made double its goal.

[BulletMagnet]

Reminds me of Eco Fighters off the cuff; hopefully a demo and/or digital release are in the works so more folks can have a crack at it.

[Shepardus]

Nice to see this finish in good time; I had gotten used to shmup projects turning into all but vaporware.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

This game has a ton of style. Had no clue it was that far along to be finished already, usually just kept track with Motoaki's twitter.

[kid aphex]

Now...can someone pick me up a copy...?

[GSK]

Furukawa's selling physical copies of the the game from his online store, as well as the OST and official documents book: http://music-msart.com/index.php#MGR-0001

[Puyopuyomayo]

How can I get one copy please?

[neontropics]

Does anyone have an educated guess on if it'd be worth getting this and hoping it runs in Wine on OS X? I'm without Windows these days...

[Legendary Hoamaru]

Furukawa's selling physical copies of the the game from his online store, as well as the OST and official documents book: http://music-msart.com/index.php#MGR-0001

This is the post I've been waiting for, thanks! Edit: Actually seems to be Japan only atm.

[kid aphex]

/still want a copy... help?

[Special World]

Would love to try this. Game looks dope, cover is dope.

[WarpZone]

Anyone come across impressions of the game anywhere yet?

I know there's some full runs on youtube but I don't want to spoil everything.

Hopefully a digital release isn't too far away.

[Shepardus]

So... has anyone here actually played this game yet? Game looks interesting, to say the least.

[GSK]

I bought it but haven't played it yet, HEY's been working on 1.01 for a little while so I'm waiting for that to drop.

There are a few different playthroughs on YT but there are so many routes and other bullshit that a lot of it is hard to parse.

[Legendary Hoamaru]

How did you buy it? Damn near every online shop they put it on seems to be japan shipping only, or at least unclear if they ship overseas.

[Squire Grooktook]

So... has anyone here actually played this game yet? Game looks interesting, to say the least.

Xaerock has been playing it a lot and tells me its pretty dope.

Very wacky (not just visually), but very good.

[GSK]

How did you buy it? Damn near every online shop they put it on seems to be japan shipping only, or at least unclear if they ship overseas.

I had someone send me a copy. It'll definitely get a digital release before too long but I don't know that it'll be translated from the jump.

[kid aphex]

Is this game released digitally yet?
If not, has anyone heard anything about a digital release?

[Legendary Hoamaru]

No Digital release yet, but it seems you can import from this shop finally

http://ovs.akbh.jp/products/list.php?tr ... 3%E3%83%89

Shipping is quite expensive though

[Legendary Hoamaru]

No Digital release yet, but it seems you can import from this shop finally

http://ovs.akbh.jp/products/list.php?tr ... 3%E3%83%89

Shipping is quite expensive though

There were issues with signing up to order it when I first posted the link, but I was able to successfully order it from this site about a week ago and received it today. Shipping only took 11 days which was surprising. Still no word on an english or digital release yet.

[Dinir]

I bought this game this April. I bought it from Rakuten using Zenmarket. Total cost was ￥8,598 (the game and the book were ￥5,400), and I have waited total of 11 days - Buying using Zenmarket took a day, Shipping inside Japan took 5 days, Zenmarket took 2 days + Sunday to send the package.

I loved the game so much that I started making a guide for explaining basics. I am sure this will help others assuming how the game plays.

Sadly I just saw Hoamaru's tweet regarding to a crucial bug. It affects the score so I am worried the amount of people interested in this game would decrease by a lot. And the response from the official twitter account was not sounding any hopeful...

[CStarFlare]

Thanks for that guide - it's a great source of information on some of Momoiro's eccentricities. I'd been putting together a guide based on my observations, but your is so well laid out I think it's not necessary. A few thoughts to add to the discussion:

Score

Every bullet that lands on a destructible object will increase the score.
When you lose a heart, the score will decrease for an amount.

The score gain for shooting only applies to the right shot; you gain 140 points per second of uninterrupted forward shot contact. I'm quite sure the back shot doesn't give you any points at all, for tick damage or enemy destruction (even on bosses). I think the others all give the same point value for killing enemies but after noticing the back shot's 0 point value I think I need to take a closer look at some more replays.

I'm almost certain you don't lose score for losing a heart - I checked a few replays of mine and just don't see this happening in a direct fashion (unlike penalties like the boss timer penalty). I don't think there's any sort of clear bonus, either.

The initial boss time penalty is -120 score/sec. I guess I've never gone long enough to notice this increasing - probably deserves a test run, along with testing whether rank is the determining factor for how long you have until the penalty kicks in. I expect it doesn't have much impact on how one should fight bosses - if you're not going for milking you'll want to kill them as quickly as possible. If you are, you'll probably be outearning the penalty until you run out of health.

Finally, with the score bug it's very important to be aware of whether you have an empty slot or not. Even after knowing about the bug I've triggered it because I threw a bomb then bought another one before it had cleared off the HUD. I toyed with the idea that the bug could help bump me up to 50k before I had earned that much - but it would cost 25k money and probably take several stages to pull off at which point the gain would be pretty minimal.

Money
I don't have much to add here, except to say that money is going to be by far your biggest contributor to SMART score (in my highest scoring run I think money was close to 60% of the total). The lowest value crystal is something like 360 Y - a single crystal contributes more than a full plant. This means that managing your purchases is extremely important. You'd rather lose health than autobomb, you'd rather your water gun stay at its default than throw 30k into upgrading it - if you can swing it, it would be best to not upgrade your health to the max. And so on.

I'm not sure missing crystals has an impact on rank; I can't recall a single time noticing my rank being any number other than a multiple of 5. But I do make a point of grabbing every crystal I can - worth testing. Any idea how long you have to stop shooting before they disappear?

How many upgrades does each weapon have? I don't think the graphic you buy it on (as they cycle through different attributes) impacts the upgrade but would be good to hear if you think so as well. Is the bomb upgrade all about screen coverage?

Animal
Plants release 300 animal worth of tokens. If you're trying to decide between a plant and a treasure, treasure is by far the most valuable and doesn't lead to rank increase.

As far as I can tell the meter fills at 1,500 animal. Animal chips don't contribute to the meter.

Scroll direction has a big impact on animals. If the stage is scrolling backward, they'll scroll to the right - which is usually away from you and behind your enemies. This is a big part of why stage 11 is a wall: almost every animal you generate is whisked away unless you put yourself in a lot of danger or throw a bomb to put yourself right in the action.

Time
So the game allows you to speed up the scroll speed to compensate for its length - because of the time penalty, one might think there would be a scoring benefit to this. But enemies don't seem to spawn or move faster, so surely fewer of them spawn the faster the scroll goes. Plants and treasures are harder to take advantage of. At max speed it seems like you might shave 15 minutes or so off the game - only about 54k worth of SMART. It's possible that one or two notches doesn't handicap you and provides a small benefit, or that certain sections of stages can be sped up without consequence - but I kind of doubt it's worth playing with. Which is a shame because it's an interesting system.

Other things
Drops
The big question I still have is how does one maximise money/animal drops from enemies? I get good results by trying to use full charges, but it doesn't feel consistent. I'm unsure if the weapon you use has an impact on it - because the front shot generates score just by making contact, does it generate fewer drops, for example? Does the back shot generate the most money or animal to compensate for its score penalty? Are there hard rules to this, or does every enemy have its own ideal way to destroy it?

The amount of each dropped seems to increase as the game goes on, but this could just be that there are more enemies in the later levels. Or perhaps rank influences it - or maybe even shot level. Or maybe Extra versions of levels give more drops. Damned if I know.

Shopping
Does buying life when at full do anything? Part of me feels it must (like, I feel this is why the bomb buying bug exists - there's supposed to be some sort of score bonus for buying while at max, but they messed it up) but I've never thrown the money away on a run to test it out.

Stage 11
I also have no idea what triggers different stage 11 bosses. I don't think it's random because I get the same boss 80% of the time - but I don't get the impression they're based on rank, either. They're all pretty equally unfun and unmilkable but it would be nice to know.

Routing
Once I feel I understand everything well enough, I'd like to theorycraft which route provides the highest score - through enemy drops, treasures, and boss milking, primarily. Maybe around avoiding certain bosses (Sable from Mountain B for example is awful at any decent rank and provides essentially no milking opportunity. Her stage is empty as well.) as well. Also considering if suicide milking on Momoko provides the best return, or if there's another stage that does? (each round of getting bodied on stage 11 gets me roughly 100k, and I can imagine a couple of bosses that could return the same or more. In theory, it's probably possible, to double KO Momoko - I've been killed by things that died after I did and give me points. But let's be serious).

It might even be worth skipping a lot of animals as the fewer shops you get the less rank will increase and the less you'll need to spend just to keep yourself alive. Though I think this depends on the answer to what influences the amount of money dropped - if rank is a big part of it then you don't want to be stingy.

Real Talk
There's five letters left in the alphabet (unlocks stop at Route U) and I can't believe there's no all stages mode. I suspect it's because all routes share the same scoreboard or because the game is already an hour long, but honestly.