http://playism-games.com/game/216/i-20000
Just curious as to whether anyone has tried this. It's from the same developer as Imalice.
Brings Irem's In The Hunt to mind, but with an added "long-range 2D sniping" sonar mechanic.
i-20000 (Wakusei Marimo) at Playism
Re: i-20000 (Wakusei Marimo) at Playism
Thanks for the heads up, had no idea this was localized. Played it for a bit over an hour & got past the loop 3 midboss, some impressions:
Sniping enemies detected on sonar is important, but sometimes you want to let the larger enemies get on screen for bullet cancels. The bullet patterns get far more hectic on later loops and are quite fun to dodge. You can select which loop to start from once you reach them. The torpedo recharges faster the closer the enemy it hits, you really need to be on point and make use of it once the game gets harder. Getting 1-2 speed-ups helps too.
Each loop I played had significantly different patterns, not sure if it goes on after 3. One thing that can be annoying is that you lose all powerups when you die, and it takes nearly a full loop to recover them. The game is survivable with no speed-ups but it gets pretty scary in the later loops.
If you like fast-paced dodging while needing to simultaneously use a precision shot this is an STG worth trying out. Definitely a cool game for such a small project.
Sniping enemies detected on sonar is important, but sometimes you want to let the larger enemies get on screen for bullet cancels. The bullet patterns get far more hectic on later loops and are quite fun to dodge. You can select which loop to start from once you reach them. The torpedo recharges faster the closer the enemy it hits, you really need to be on point and make use of it once the game gets harder. Getting 1-2 speed-ups helps too.
Each loop I played had significantly different patterns, not sure if it goes on after 3. One thing that can be annoying is that you lose all powerups when you die, and it takes nearly a full loop to recover them. The game is survivable with no speed-ups but it gets pretty scary in the later loops.
If you like fast-paced dodging while needing to simultaneously use a precision shot this is an STG worth trying out. Definitely a cool game for such a small project.
Re: i-20000 (Wakusei Marimo) at Playism
Hey Zaarock, thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds like my cup of tea, I'll give it a go.
Re: i-20000 (Wakusei Marimo) at Playism
I got this game last weekend, and I have to say it's pretty cool. It's small game with a short development time (three weeks, according to the developer commentary on the Playism page) so don't expect anything super massive or ambitious, but it's more polished than I expected. It's a very short game (I didn't time it, but I think 5-10 minutes and just two bosses) and it's very generous with lives, so it's not too hard to get a clear after getting a hang of the mechanics. However, it has multiple loops that ramp up the difficulty quite a bit, and you can choose to start from subsequent loops after you've reached them (though you'll be started off with the greatest number of lives you had when reaching that loop, so it seems more for practice than anything). I've reached the third loop (took me longer than it did Zaarock...) and the game's pretty insane at that point - even in the third loop it throws in new stuff not in the previous two loops.
The game's central gimmick is using the sonar to locate enemies beyond the edge of the screen and snipe them with your torpedoes. If you let the large enemies get on the screen they start shooting really fast and dangerous bullets, but destroying them then cancels all bullets, which as Zaarock said can be useful. It took me a little while to get used to because it can be hard to tell if you're doing things right if you don't know what to look for (such as the carcasses on the ground that show up later, or the faster torpedo recharge time when you hit something since you can only have one torpedo going at a time). The game lets you choose between auto/semi-auto/manual mode for the sonar, but I don't see any reason not to pick semi-auto since it seems to give you the best of both auto and manual, automatically using the sonar regularly but also letting you activate it on-demand. Overall I find it a neat mechanic, nothing mindblowing or revolutionary but good for a little experimental game like this.
Also, I didn't even realize until reading the YouTube description of the Playism trailer, but enemies close in on you faster if you miss torpedo shots, so that explains why enemies don't always appear at the times I expect them to. You could potentially take advantage of this to time enemy spawns that you can use for cancels.
The game's got a lovely ambiance to it, both the graphics and the soundtrack (which is available on Bandcamp but also included with the game), but you could probably already tell that from the screenshots and video on Playism. Despite its short development time and small scope, the devs didn't skimp on the features - the game features in-game options including rebindable keys (and gamepad support, but I haven't tried that), fullscreen/windowed mode and screen-scaling factor for windowed, a replay system that autosaves your replays, and even achievements (I really love the "aquarium" that displays your achievements).
The game's central gimmick is using the sonar to locate enemies beyond the edge of the screen and snipe them with your torpedoes. If you let the large enemies get on the screen they start shooting really fast and dangerous bullets, but destroying them then cancels all bullets, which as Zaarock said can be useful. It took me a little while to get used to because it can be hard to tell if you're doing things right if you don't know what to look for (such as the carcasses on the ground that show up later, or the faster torpedo recharge time when you hit something since you can only have one torpedo going at a time). The game lets you choose between auto/semi-auto/manual mode for the sonar, but I don't see any reason not to pick semi-auto since it seems to give you the best of both auto and manual, automatically using the sonar regularly but also letting you activate it on-demand. Overall I find it a neat mechanic, nothing mindblowing or revolutionary but good for a little experimental game like this.
Also, I didn't even realize until reading the YouTube description of the Playism trailer, but enemies close in on you faster if you miss torpedo shots, so that explains why enemies don't always appear at the times I expect them to. You could potentially take advantage of this to time enemy spawns that you can use for cancels.
The game's got a lovely ambiance to it, both the graphics and the soundtrack (which is available on Bandcamp but also included with the game), but you could probably already tell that from the screenshots and video on Playism. Despite its short development time and small scope, the devs didn't skimp on the features - the game features in-game options including rebindable keys (and gamepad support, but I haven't tried that), fullscreen/windowed mode and screen-scaling factor for windowed, a replay system that autosaves your replays, and even achievements (I really love the "aquarium" that displays your achievements).
