Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

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system11
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Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by system11 »

I'm surprised we have no thread for this yet, perhaps I'm just blind. New Touhou style shmup demo on Steam, kind of stands out due to the art style and the boss fight transition. Honestly - DON'T watch the video, just download the demo and see for yourself. So far I've worked out that grazing while focused matters, when the focus ring flashes you can go into a Hyper style mode with the bomb button.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/ ... =672193717

Official site: http://deerhorn.co.kr/

Edit - has been greenlit, success!
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by kid aphex »

Some beautiful art there. Aesthetically cohesive, too.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by AxelMill »

The game is quite gorgeous, yes.

I went in expecting this amazing boss transition, but all I got was... A really good boss transition. "Oh, it's the midboss", I thought, "there's still the stage theme being played."
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by system11 »

I make it no secret that I hate gaming on PCs, but I'm actually excited to see what other bosses they come up with. I'll be keeping an eye on this one for sure.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Very nice aesthetic yes. The animation style reminds me of Vanillaware, I'm guessing they're using the same style of flash tweening here.

Only complaints:
-The lack of animation or general movement on the player character "sprite". Not even a left/right turning animation? It always makes me wonder why people go to so much trouble for a setting and aesthetic and then neglect to put any work into the one thing that you spend the entire game looking at and identifying with. The player sprite does looks pretty good though (even if it doesn't have the rocking pose of Cybattler or the character of Vacant Ark).
-The music is not bad but doesn't do much for me either.
-Kinda chugs during bullet storms on the boss for me. Feels like there's more slowdown then intentional. Too much either way.

Gameplay looks alright. Nice enemy formations and layout for a stage 1, and I dearly appreciate the effort to hook the players with a cinematic set piece (the boss transformation). Most shmup devs these days seem to think that bullets on screen are enough to get people excited, and don't seem to care about making things imaginative or hype. The atmosphere in general here is pretty respectable.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by Stevens »

I like the presentation and the music htis that sweet spot for me.

The sound effect when you collect the souls is grating though. Option to turn off?
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by system11 »

Thanks to Shepardus for updating me - this has been greenlit! I'm looking forward to seeing what else they come up with for bosses.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by Shepardus »

Thanks to Elixir for sharing it on the @shmups Twitter. Looking forward to seeing more!
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by system11 »

As noted by Elixir on twitter, there's a new promotional video on YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cpYQLZ-WRpw

August release date
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by Jeneki »

When you punch your game's name into Amazon and the franchise that pops up has so many listings that it has an option to split it into categories, you know your game's name has been chosen poorly. We'll see if this slips under the radar.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by Special World »

Ugh, thank god--it's what Bullet Soul should have been. You actually collect the souls, and you have to dodge through bullet waves! Praise be. It does have some strong visual design, but I do think it could use just a liiiiittle more work in that department, like Grooktook said. Either way, it looks like a great release. I hope it gets a console port, but I'll probably pick it up on PC either way. Looks like the sort of shooter that doesn't come around very often. And I'm a sucker for multicolor rainbow bullet spreads.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by MommysBestGames »

Wow the boss designs and art are excellent! I don't really care for Touhou style games.. but might still give this a spin.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by stargalaqtic »

Looks good, going to download the demo like op said and give it a go. Def put on my steam wishlist tho.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by MommysBestGames »

Played the demo. It had a fun, multi-staged boss fight for the single boss in the demo.. if that's the real boss 1 and there's more like it, that'd be impressive! And I generally enjoyed it, even saying that I mostly don't care for Touhou games.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by cj iwakura »

Yeah, looks really cool. Wishlisted. Some of the patterns remind me of Shikigami's, too.

Can't find it on the store, come to think of it...
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by BulletMagnet »

Okay, so this is out and I took a chance on it, here are a few quick impressions -

- Seems to keep a pretty steady 60 FPS on my non-gaming laptop, though the thing is made in Unity so you'll need to make visual-related adjustments via the little box that appears before the game starts. Only in-game options are music/sound, so no tate either.

- 3 buttons: shoot, focus, bomb (Z-X-C on keyboard IIRC). You need to hold the first two together to get a "condensed" shot. My 3rd-party 360 controller works, but only the analog stick, not the d-pad. Two characters; one has a wide shot, the other has an odd semi-homing setup I haven't completely figured out yet.

- Three modes; "Arcade", "Boss Rush", and "Custom", haven't tried the latter, so don't know how it works yet. Three difficulties apiece. Separate local leaderboards for each, but I didn't see online leaderboards offhand. Five stages; only Achievements you get are for clearing them, no trading cards.

- Killing enemies and cancelling bullets auto-collects "souls", which factor into your score though I'm not exactly sure how. Grazing bullets (they can be "cuddled", a la Shikigami no Shiro) fills up a special attack meter; once full, hitting the Bomb button activates a powered-up "Soul Collect" mode, which seems to work more or less like Crimzon Clover's "Break". Hitting the bomb button again before "soul collect" ends spends a bomb to activate, basically, "Double Break".

- "Soul Collect" obviously factors into scoring, though I haven't worked out how; activating it temporarily boosts your soul count, but when it ends it drops precipitously, and the effect is stronger in both respects with the "double break". I'm tempted to guess that it's something like Homura or Exelica, where scoring isn't about simply activating the special technique as much as possible, but using it only in spots where the math works out in a way that will actually do you good; in my second attempt I gathered more souls than the first time around, but my score was significantly lower. Still just guesswork on my part though.

- Bullet visibility is mostly okay, and your hit area is visible during "focus", though there were a handful of times I got a bit lost - could be partially due to my non-gaming hardware/screen, though. At the end of each level you can choose between an extra bomb or extra life, so a 1CC probably won't be terribly hard for anyone a bit more skilled than I am (i.e. pretty much everyone :P); not sure if score-based extends exist or not.

- No major bugs I noticed, though my controller sometimes seemed a bit hesitant to activate at the beginning of each stage; not sure what the "trigger" there might be. Between levels I would also sometimes see "Not responding" at the top of the window for a few moments, but it always managed to recover fairly quickly.

That's about all I can think to mention off the cuff; will need a bit more time to hopefully figure this thing out a bit better.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by Klatrymadon »

Nice post! This is pretty much my appraisal at the moment, too. Although I'd add to the list of bugs that (for me, at least) the bomb/"soul attack" stock isn't replenished when doing a quick restart. If you ended with none, you'll start with none.

(Also, I don't know if it's just my PC but it takes ages for anything to happen after choosing "restart" or "exit", and between levels...)
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by microfolk »

Does the game support non 16:9 resolutions? I'm stuck with a shitty 5:4 screen and the demo has no resolution options so I'd like to know this information before buying it.
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Re: Soul Eater demo on Steam Greenlight

Post by PC Engine Fan X! »

Soul Eater demo is still up for your d/l persual: https://drive.google.com/uc?id=0ByQbsEb ... t=download

Download it before it's removed for good.

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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by system11 »

I bought it and love it and even streamed it from my ancient laptop just now.

It struggled quite a bit with encoding and running the game at once during the bosses, but it's 9 years old ;)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/181292488

I credit fed it. That final boss fire curtain sweep thing is evil.
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by system11 »

I should add - I did have to add some runtime flags to get the game to work on my PC - if it immediately explodes with an Oops message, try adding this to startup options:

-force-d3d9

I found this in a general Unity forum.
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by kid aphex »

This might be as close to a Vanillaware STG as I'll ever get.
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by BulletMagnet »

There's a patch out to add d-pad support and a few other things.

Tried "Custom" mode out, which allows you to tweak a handful of settings, most interestingly exchanging grazing for kills as your means to charge the "soul collect" meter, and replacing the bomb-fueled "double break" with a CC-esque second charge meter, which you can fill and activate at your leisure. Depending on which switches you make, this can mean removing the grazing mechanic entirely in favor of a more "traditional" experience, and/or allowing the "stockpiling" of soul collect activations, since if you fill both meters but only activate one at a time you'll almost always have a spare one ready to go; the latter in particular makes the game considerably easier.

I'm also beginning to think that scoring is simpler than I'd previously guessed; I'm inclined to think that the "souls" collected serve as a target multiplier, and that the more you have the more points you get for killing things. Therefore, activating "soul collect" temporarily doubles (I think) your soul count (and thus your points per enemy), while "double break" triples it; therefore you kinda do want to activate it as much as you can, though you're probably best-advised saving your bombs/double breaks for bosses and other high-value kills.

Hopefully I'm not too far off target with any of that...
Does the game support non 16:9 resolutions? I'm stuck with a shitty 5:4 screen and the demo has no resolution options so I'd like to know this information before buying it.
Gave it a quick look and at least on my setup it only offers a small handful of widescreen resolutions, sorry. :(
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by Special World »

Ugh, I hate grazing. Worst shmup mechanic. Gonna give the demo a download though.
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by system11 »

Well I'm past the st4 boss on a credit, the more I play this the more I like it. This is a huge relief as I'd built myself up expecting a good game from the original demo. My real problem is having to play squinting at a laptop screen on the floor, that and not getting into position quick enough for the st3 boss final attack.
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by system11 »

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/183044335?t=22m22s

So that's my best attempt thus far, apologies for the quality of the video and the parts where it just pauses for a while - that's my 9 year old laptop struggling with streaming and running the game at the same time.
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by Glick »

though the thing is made in Unity so you'll need to make visual-related adjustments via the little box that appears before the game starts. Only in-game options are music/sound, so no tate either.
For what it's worth, this is entirely on the dev. They can easily add that stuff to the ingame options. The little box before the game is more intended for early alpha builds and such, it should never make its way into a release product :(
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by Mars »

The art on this looks absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing! :)
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by BulletMagnet »

An interview with the creators.
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Re: Soul Eater full game now on Steam!

Post by wgogh »

I've played that one recently. It always bothered me how so many doujin/indie shmups dont care about the stage designs. Even when we have 'something', it looks like we're just floating above a scrolling image. Well, in this game this is less of a problem. My pc also have a square monitor, just like microfolk, so I wasnt able to fully apreciate the game.
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