Rainchaser

[XoPachi]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3169300/Rainchaser/

https://x.com/kornod1/status/1829523333475373540

I've had my eye on this one for a few months now. It was nice to finally play a demo. The game feels great and has this RSG feel to it's weapon usage in needing to hold multiple inputs and switch about to get different weapons. You're switching fairly frequently once that single stage picks up. Enemies like to surround and move about a lot to get some slick use from your weapons. The game is all in on the weapons.
There wasnt anything in the way of bombs or hypers despite it looking and playing like the sort of game that would. The frequency you're switching weapons makes up for it to me. Scoring consists of a very simple enemy chaining but its very engrossing because the performance metric is extremely strict. Keeping a full chain is pretty tight. Getting hit once hurts your score hard. It's deceptive in its simplicity.

The song for this stage is great and the presentation is very unique. I love these more deep metal and earth tones. I'm not sure if that's going to remain the look the rest of the game or just stage 1 but, its gorgeous and very mellow.

A real treat in the works, this one.

[Lander]

Man, that swinging Crimson Star macguffin in the trailer is so Xenogears / Stonelike. A hefty piece of imagery to counterbalance the innocent this is a game about shooting things box blurb brace for existential trauma!

Looks cool, I'm reminded of Birdcage, that other stylistically potent Treasure-y indie shmup that made the rounds last year or so; very mysterious and show-don't-tell.

[XoPachi]

Oh boy! A ranked the stage! :u

[Bassa-Bassa]

Looks cool but man, how many resolutions did he use for the graphics at once? What did he try to achieve with that?

[eksratu]

Just played through the demo--I thought it looked great and played great! Def going to be looking out for the full release.

[marus]

I played the demo yesterday; the game's promising for sure! The aesthetics are really cool, and switching between the different shot types is fun. Stage 1 has a lot of cool enemy patterns, but it didn't really seem like there's much to the scoring system besides "quick-kill midbosses" and "don't get hit" (though to be fair I didn't spend a ton of time with it). Hopefully the release version is more feature rich in terms of things like tate mode, replays, practice settings, ect. Either way I'll be looking forward to the full release!

The game's also on itch.io for anyone who'd rather get it that way: https://kornodd.itch.io/rainchaser

EDIT: I decided to put more time into the game today and knock out a better score. My thoughts on the scoring system remain the same; I think the game is fun, but it lacks the depth and staying power that a well thought out scoring system provides. Hopefully the developer can make refinements as time goes on. Youtube link

[clippa]

Nice! I only managed a little better score - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1G78Dvrr7cc

The dev says that the scoring system will be tweaked. For one thing, currently tick points are being rewarded too much, but not enough for the swords.
Yeah, a few more scoring mechanics would be great.
Rewards for how quickly you killed the boss, or even for how quickly you beat each individual phase would be nice, stick with the speedkilling theme and incentivise risky play with the swords, and the things you collect making more of a difference to score would be good. Currently, I don't really worry about missing any.
The multiplier could maybe drop faster when you aren't chaining enemies too.

Game is amazing! Can't wait to see more.

[-Fish-]

Played the demo. Seems ok. Hopefully it will have online leaderboards implemented for full release.

[XoPachi]

One thing about the game that sort of irks me with other indie STG's, they go all in on the music, but the sound design is always kind of lacking. Firing, item collection, explosion effects, and just general audio flare is really flat in a lot of these games, and I find this one to be no different. At least for the vertical scrolling bullet hells.

The weapon system being so robust but not having any terribly distinct audio per weapon is jarring especially. I talked about it months ago, but sometimes I feel underpowered even when the game is perfectly balanced. This is a huge reason why to me. Things just sound weak.