A PARADE OF YOUKAI AND SPIRITS
It's been quite a while since I saw an indie shmup especially made by our friends of the shmups forum since Pieslice's Crisis Wing (an amazing Truxton clone) and boy, I like when the indies are good enough to make worth the purchase.
This time is Super16bits Japan folk shmup Twilight Parade: Moonlit Mononoke.
Straight out of the spirit world.
Before starting the game, there's three options: Start which obviously starts the game, Settings is the language changing option and Awards, which are the achievement tracking.
Once you start the game, you have to choose one of the eight characters available for you.
RED ONI: Backed up by a Tanuki which follows her like the Options from Gradius, she's a full frontal firing character which shoots a twin shot of considerable firing rate in both normal and slow speed buttons. Her Tanuki fires a linear "Pea Shooter".
RED ONI (SWIMSUIT): Backed up by a beachball acting like her "Option", her shots are the same as the regular Red Oni, but the Beachball fires larger frontal bullets.
BLUE ONI: Like the Red Oni, she's also backed up by a Tanuki, but this time it makes a "Polar Orbit" around the Oni. Her main weapon is a frontal single shot while the Tanuki is the same "Pea Shooter". Since he uses a single shoot, she's the "weakest" type character of the game.
BLUE ONI (SWIMSUIT): With a beachball backup like her red counterpart but with the vertical orbit like the Tanuki, the main shot is the same as the normal Blue Oni, and the Beachball is the same frontal firing weapon: Large bullets.
KITSUNE: Supported by two pet foxes doing a polar/vertical orbit, her main weapon is fireballs shaped like a fox's head. Her pet foxes shoots the same blue pea shooters like the Onis beachalls.
KITSUNE (SWIMSUIT): Same as the regular Kitsune. The only difference is that she's wearing a bikini.
GYOKUTO: Supported by two rabbits above and below her, she's more of a "Power" type frontal since her main weapon is carrot missiles with laser shots fired simultaneously. Her rabbits back her up with carrot missiles for a devastating total of four projectiles on screen, all with a fast pace.
GYOKUTO (SWIMSUIT): No change at all. Her weaponry and support units are the same as the reguar Gyokuto. The only difference is she's wearing a bikini and riding a banana instead of her hammer.
Folklore Warfare
Talking about the gameplay of Twilight Parade is about going basic with the weaponry and basic bullet hell. Starting off with your weapon which is the same full-frontal rapid volley backed up with pod-styled units but you have two fire buttons: One is the regular shot, and the other is the regular shot with a difference; you move on a slower speed. While this idea sounds good, its kinda disappointing that the slow speed kept the regular shot instead of a stronger laser beam (think DonPachi for example).
Despite having a huge sprite for a playable character, Super16bits addressed that issue by granting it a small hitbox which is visible all time. Also, like in R-Type Final 2, you don't die by touching the wall, floor or ceiling (call the AVGN!) making the game as fun and playable like any other shmup you can find. Well thought Super16bits. Despite the simplicity, there's jewel items that you can get by killing enemies and coins which are used at the end of the level. But what's most interesting is the score multiplier. Like in Blazing Star, killing enemies will duplicate your score obtained. In Twilight Parade's case, you can reach up to x100 by killing enemies continuously before the multiplier time runs out.
Beautiful yet intrincated bullet patterns are waiting for your challenge!
Boss battles are a gorgeous display of bullet patterns that despite the amount of artillery thrown at the player, you can navigate throught it most of the times (I'll explain that in a moment) and Super16bits was creative with some of the attacks like the cat-paw shaped shots and the bullets that split after hitting the ground. The danmaku bullet patterns here are more like ZUN's Touhou Project than Cave or Psikyo.
Trial of luck
The reward: Rearm yourself or regain health.
At the end of each level, you'll be playing a slot game where your coins come to use. If three respective figures match or you make a specific combination (Gyokuto-Kitsune-Red Oni), you'll be getting a bonus. Depending of the resulting combinations you can get energy or refill/increase your bomb stock. Keep in mind, each try will cost you 5 coins.
Perfect description of an "Out of Control" moment.
Time to talk about the issues of the game: First one is the lack of a power up system. You are always stucked in the same "power level" and sometimes can be troublesome with the stages, considering some enemies can take multiple hits, forcing you to either burn a bomb or ignore them. This problem is notorious in boss battles which they seems to have a lot of HP and takes a lot of time to take them down, even if you burn all your bombs in the battle they are still standing like if nothing happened.
Speaking of bombs, getting hit doesn't replenish your bomb stock, in order to have three bombs again you have to lose all your lives and then continuing. This, combined with the lack of powerups and too much HP for bosses can lead to "Out-of-control" moments in the game especially in boss fights since they can suddenly pelt the screen with bullets. This is NOTORIOUS in Stage 3 since the ghost girl boss fills the screen with all sized bullets making the slow manuevering difficult. Fortunately, you can continue as much as you need to, while the game keeps tracking of how many times you continued the game acting as a "Death Count" of some sorts. This doesn't affect progression or unlocks a bad ending if you continue once or twice.
After defeating the final boss, you might expect an ending or a simple cutscene followed by the credits, but sadly, that's not the case for Twilight Parade: Moonlit Mononoke. After defeating the final boss you'll be right back at the title screen. No epilogue, no explanation of what happened after you defeated Kyubi, no nothing. I know its an indie game, but at least you could try to make a short cutscene to close curtains properly.
Following the steps of 90's arcades.
Not bad for your first work, Super16bits.
Graphically, the game excels on that aspect since it manages to bring a vibrant, multi-layered and incredibly well animated sprite work which can be compared with Konami's arcades from the 90's. For an indie game, this is an accomplishment, and the sprites solid animation is mostly notorious on the enemy sprites more than the characters. The utilization of japanese folklore and Japan culture related locations are also a breath of fresh air over the science-fiction and military nowadays.
My only complaints about the graphics would be the overpixelation inconsistencies on the slot machine and the fact that all of the bosses are just standing targets with very simple animation to make them look alive. Aside from that, the graphic aspect is promising.
The music well, there's a few things I want to say. To begin with, the title screen reutilizes the in-game music of Akinofa, the character select screen has a NES-like chiptune music with a percussion similar to Sunsoft titles like Batman and their port of After Burner II. Stages 1, 2, 3 and 5 are heavily guitar-garage metal style tracks that sound like if they were influenced by the classic Arcade/Genesis shmup Vapor Trail: Hyper Offense Formation. Stage 4 is the weakest of all the soundtrack since its a repetitive tribal drumming that lasts a few seconds and loops non-stop (or "Allumer styled"). Strangefully, Stage 5's theme abruptly ends halfway through the stage, leaving the second half of the level and the boss fight completely silent.
TRIVIA PARADE: MOONLIT CURIOSITIES
- According to Super16bits, the game takes inspiration from Success' Cotton series and Japanese folklore as well.
- To obtain "The Moon" Trophy/Achievement you need to position Gyokuto on the moon in Stage 5 for a few seconds until the Trophy message pops-up.
It only needed the help of a few spirits to win this battle.
In the end, we have a bullet hell that varies on intensity in order to challenge both enthusiast and amateur bullet hell fans. Although there's room for further improvement despite being Super16bits first commercial effort, Twilight Parade: Moonlit Monoke is one of the very few shmup surprises from EastAsiaSoft that doesn't look mediocre.
It's good to have indie shmups developed by someone from the forum and Super16bits, thanks a lot for this game and keep practicing, I'm sure you can do even better in the future.
8 R-9's out of 10 for you:
Well done Super16bits!
A positive result in the Eda Scale.