Opus - Awesome Shoot 'em Up Music-Based Flash Game

[mcbrody]

http://www.opusthegame.com/

Opus is an awesome arcade style shoot 'em up mixed in with some rather unique and cool music intergrated features, along with a kicking rad art style. Sort of like what would happen if G-Darius had a baby with Audiosurf. I've spent an hour on it myself playing my own collection of 8-bit chiptune music, which it seems to work very well with.
A tip with any music-based game like this, is to play very loud fast stuff if you want to increase the intensity of your gameplay thus inducing a barrel of fun.

Here's text from the website

What is Opus?
Opus is a two-dimensional, constantly moving, side-scrolling, action, shoot-'em-up, with real-time music-based level generation.

The goal of the game is to provide a forum for the player to experience the expression of music. The game's core function is to facilitate (in real-time) the player' experience of music as it is translated into gameplay.

Opus is a student game made in 8 weeks.

Load Your Music
Players are allowed to load their choice of music (in MP3 format) into the game, which is then processed by the engine and made into a level. Players must then shoot and avoid obstacles and enemies, which are all spawned by the sound analyzer. The player's end goal is to reach the finale of the song without loosing all of their lives.

Become the Hero
Each song tells a unique story. Listen to your music in a new way.

Powerup and Rack Up Points
Opus has different sets of powerups and weapons that will aide in destroying the enemies. Collect point orbs and combo-kill enemies to increase your score.

Some pictures of the game itself.



(screenshots don't do this game enough justice)


This game will soon have it's own download meaning you can just pick up and play any time straight from your desktop.

Please support the team by spreading this game around as much as you can, and to anyone you'd think would enjoy a game like this. It's not a well known game yet, and I'm sure some recognition would be an awesome reward for the team's hard efforts that went into making this game.

You could also recommend songs to play for each other in this thread, what song has given you the best gameplay so far.

NOTE: Close all other tabs if you want this game to play flawlessley.
Close any Youtube tabs especially, or Opus will freeze. Apparently they're working on this.

So on you go - play it.
http://www.opusthegame.com/

[RNGmaster]

I'm sorry, not even Shrine of Farewell could salvage this. Long healthbar = instant turnoff.

[Udderdude]

First off, you can stop pretending you aren't one of the developers. It's pretty obvious. :P

Second, no matter what kind of music I threw at it, the game was still a snooze because it's near impossible to die with the huge health bar and health rings everywhere. I'm not even sure there were any enemy bullets, maybe I got hit and didn't even notice. It was, however, impossible to kill everything as the enemies start appearing and moving across the screen very fast, and they have way too much health for the player to move into position and kill every one. Also, enemy/item appearences were very rarely actually appearing along with the music, the beat detection is pretty much useless. Also also, the screen randomly scrolling up and down caused enemies and powerups to move off the screen, with no way for the player to move up/down to make them appear again. Frustrating as hell!

Third, less blowing your own horn please. In fact I'm bored, let's pick this crap apart

Opus is an awesome

Citation needed.

arcade style

You don't know what that term even means if you think your game is arcade anything.

rather unique and cool music intergrated features

There was actually a shmup posted not too long ago that did pretty much everything your game does. It also had built-in music, which was nice, since I could just pick one of the built-in tracks and not have to go digging for and uploading MP3s. The "unique" music features have also been done in other popular games (Audiosurf, etc.) and music synched to events in-game that actually work (Zillion Beatz, etc.)

along with a kicking rad art style

It's the same boring generic "abstract" art "style" I've seen a billion times by now.

Become the Hero - Each song tells a unique story. Listen to your music in a new way.

Who are you (er sorry, I mean the developers) trying to convince with this, three year olds?

p.s. Digipen is a ripoff, just letting you know :3

[Ixmucane2]

I agree with Udderdude, but at least there are sane keyboard controls and some genuine effort.

Being unable not only to kill everything, but also to see everything (due to the hostile scrolling) is the current worst problem; they could make everything less huge and fit all the playfield in the window.

[stryc9]

FINISH HIM!

[RNGmaster]

p.s. Digipen is a ripoff, just letting you know :3

I agreed with everything but this. That's super harsh, man - Digipen has produced some remarkably skilled folks, esp. the Portal team.

[Udderdude]

p.s. Digipen is a ripoff, just letting you know :3

I agreed with everything but this. That's super harsh, man - Digipen has produced some remarkably skilled folks, esp. the Portal team.

Ok, that was kind of a dick move, but I still think it's overpriced for what you end up learning (Which anyone self-motivated enough could learn on their own to be honest ..)

[Despatche]

Speaking of Portal, nice logo!

[RNGmaster]

Oh, and what's up with the square bullets, Opus dude? That's not what I would call awesome visual style.

[worstplayer]

Shouldn't games like this synchronize with music? I tried feeding it everything from rock to trance to plain bassdrum loop, nothing worked. It does sort of follow general loudness of the song, but even that's very inaccurate.

Oh, and shittiest advertising ever. Would it hurt to just say "hey guys, i made a game, check it out" instead of pretending to be someone else?