[Bullet Hell - Flash] Echo Bullet - Please try it! :D

[Nonako]

(Mod edit: moved from Shmups Chat)

(So sorry for my English )

I just finished a little bullet hell game and want to share it with everyone in a right place. I believe in here I can get many useful feedbacks! Not only something like: "This game is so hard so it's bad!".

Of course I just registered, have one post and trying to promotion the game with in-game ads, but I'm not spamming and not make this thread just for money. I really want to share my creation with everyone who enjoy bullet hell games and get as much feedback as good, so I can make more better bullet hell in future!

Please try this game and leave your comments, I will very happy to read all of your words! And if you are interested in this game, please help me to write a review for it to share with everyone! I really want to do it my self but it seems not objective, also my English is bad...

Here is my game link: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/604398

In this game you will face with 9 bosses and 30 waves of bullet hells. Maybe some "spells" seem repeat but I tried hard to make every boss and attack has its own unique style. Also keep the bullet parttens look good but still easy enough to beat. I think who like bullet hell games will enjoy this.

Some screenshots:





Thank you so much!

[Dave_K.]

Hi Nonako, welcome to the forum. Here are my first thoughts after trying your game.

The controls/instruction screen was good, but after hitting enter, you present a title screen that has a big advertisement for another game, and no obvious way to start your game. The only buttons on this screen are "submit" and "ranking". I thought the game already ended. I did not realize you had to click on the blue alien guy to start, despite the "choose your enemy" wording above it.

NewGrounds already displays an advertisement during the game loading, so I don't see why you need another very large advertisement that makes your title screen confusing. I'd also change the way you start levels, maybe change the wording to "select your level to begin" and then put a number inside each of the enemy shown.

As for the game itself, I found it overly simplistic and got bored after the first level. If this was your first attempt at a flash shmup game, then its a nice start, but you have a long way to go if you want to get people to play it more than once. I'd recommend reading the following thread:

New developers, please read this (common mistakes)

Good luck.

[n0rtygames]

mmkay, you wanted useful feedback.

Not only something like: "This game is so hard so it's bad!"

Your first boss pattern was harder than the second. It just came out of nowhere with no pacing or build up to the attack. It didn't feel like it was applying pressure to me, slowly forcing me to one side of the screen with a thin chance of escape - it just waved its tentacles at me in a mind boggling way that got me killed a few times while I tried to figure out the logic behind the pattern.

You should probably apply some pacing and build up... it's the first encounter of your game. Even in Touhou, which you're clearly a fan of from the "SPELL BONUS" that popped up on my screen - the first enemies that fire at you have very mundane firing patterns that don't boggle the mind.

Pacing! Pacing! Pacing!

Note how Mushi Futari stage 1 gives you 4 popcorns in a row which actually lead you to the island that will start spraying bullets at you and then a stream of enemies to take you to the other side where the next large enemy comes in from, past a pillar that you can shed extra points off with the risk of suicide bullets... after that, you see a large worm enemy ahead of you and since you've been lead to the right side of the screen where it is, you get a stream of enemies coming down the center and left sides which you must deal with before retaking your position underneath the big worm dude. So you're constantly being forced in to danger.

Also take a look at how its bullet patterns (or in any Cave shooter) tend to not force you to flail and do the happy dance, but instead just try to force you to the edge of the screen and crush you with barrier formations amongst the bullets. The boss fight for stage 1 in mushi does this, with its fire breathing attack. which arcs across the screen.

Then this happened on its second form, which is where I stopped playing (sorry):


That there is a safe spot found in my first couple of minutes of gameplay, after your first pattern managed to annoy me with its tentacles.

It's nice and pretty, easy to understand how to play it. Lots of potential - you just need to tweak it for gameplay now that you've managed to make a game with a decent bullet count in.

Hope that's useful, that's just from first impressions - which are what counts. I'll give it another go now

[EmperorIng]

I echo the sentiments on pacing - check out Chaos Field on the Gamecube for a game that is also nothing but bosses, but handles progression much differently. The beginning of the game has to ease players into the new game-mechanics, instead of bombarding them outright. Even the first phase of Touhou bosses do this.

[n0rtygames]

Okay,

The green boss that bounces around is completely mad. I just spent a couple of minutes being chased by a glowing green thing that vomits neon lights at me. I then spent most of my time at the top of the screen tapping my fingers going "Oh come on, get to the top already"


Because - the size of your hitbox is incredibly small. I think you're expecting people to weave through 2-3 pixel wide gaps... which on a high resolution monitor is quite mental. The red monkey has a bit of an EspGaluda thing going on, but the density of the bullets and hitbox size killed it for me.

I had to grin though, a lot of the patterns you've written are very pretty and they remind me a lot of patterns I once had which I later ditched because they didn't make for a fun experience. The one with circles that expand from the center of the boss with gaps in is something that doesn't work on its own unless you have an overlapping curtain fire coming down the screen to force the player to dodge falling bullets while they're moving in to those incredibly safe looking 'gates' in the circles.

I think as has been mentioned, you should read over some of the developer friendly threads and take some of the advice from them. Given the size of your game, I'd say you could probably ease back on the bullet count and instead go for larger bullets.

Part of the magic of bullet hell games is that we all know the bullets have smaller hitboxes than the graphic - which is what makes it so fun and gets you a little bit hype when you squeeze through barriers that have no visible opening.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The easiest thing to do would be to point out that you can play it fullscreen (rightclick and select Show All) but flash games sites don't like letting users know it's easy to do this as it reduces ad viewing. Also, flash games tend to get a bit flaky/choppy when you're playing it in a large window/fullscreen so it's not an ideal medium for the genre (could just be my computers suck).

Agree with the complaints about inconsistent pattern difficulty. Also, the music seems to be heavily compressed to the point where it's a tad unpleasantly tinny?

[BPzeBanshee]

Obviously the music's heavily compressed due to filesize issues, otherwise it'd be horridly large.

Fullscreen with Flash is really terrible no matter what computer you have. Playing in a large window is a considerable improvement over fullscreen but unless the game itself is a small native size it's still going to be horrendous.

That's what I know about Flash itself: I'll try the game when I get a decent computer to run it on and some spare time. HTML5 probably does a better job for speed depending on the browser these days anyway.

[n0rtygames]

The easiest thing to do would be to point out that you can play it fullscreen (rightclick and select Show All) but flash games sites don't like letting users know it's easy to do this as it reduces ad viewing.

Bloody flash games!!

Thanks Roo.

I apologise entirely for my criticism in that regard. It appears I was just being incredibly stupid. Though my framerate seems to suffer when flash stuff is scaled up like that

[BPzeBanshee]

Gave it a go and it ran better than I expected. Not bad for something in Flash with a nice bullet count.

Definitely agree with the sentiments about pacing but I think some of the boss orders could just be switched around to fix that.

I like the ship too: retro but not obvious Space Invaders clone or anything like that.

[Nonako]

Thank everyone! Because my English I hardly can say much but thanks for everyone!

Hi BareknuckleRoo, I choose Flash just because I can easy make some cash in a short time without making a pretty high quality game to put in market. I really need money to pay my school tuition, you know, everyone need money! But I love making bullet hell game too. Yea, this is first time I made a bullet hell in flash, I just learn about flash in a short time and I don't have much time for making game. So I feel really sorry when I realize I can did it better. Like you said, the musics were heavily compressed, I can't leave a flash game with big size that loading time can make players give up for playing. About inconsistent pattern difficulty I really want to hear more from you! Thank you so much!

Thank BPzeBanshee for gave my game a try. Don't worry much about speed in my games because my computer is slow too. I'm sure I only love to make game that can play well on slow computer. Because I'm new in flash, I didn't optimize the game much but I think the game speed is not so bad!

Thanks for all kind worlds but if there are anything you don't like / hate with this game please let me know. If I know what are bad I can improve them to be better. Thank you so much n0rtygames, for let me know what I did wrong there! About pacing you are pretty right! I felt the same when I was nearly complete this game but really, don't have much time to improve it. But since you said about this point, sure it will be in my mind when i make next games.

Thank for let me know about Chaos Field, EmperorIng! I can't try it because I don't have Gamecube but watch some gameplay, reviews from youtube and other sites I learned something really useful! Really! There are some ideas went into my mind that i will use in my next games!

And Dave_K, thank you so much! Your link is super useful with a newbie like me! About the advertisement, I tried to make some more extra cash , not much, in total I only make $0.6 from that ads place until this post time. I'm not kind of who love money but seriously, every cent can save my life. I think a reason that make you got problem with menu is that you didn't play flash game much! This kind of menus are in so many flash game out there and I just tried to simulate them! It's a little sad that you got bored after the first boss, I really realize that I need to work harder next time. Thank you again!

I'm nearly finish my little bullet hell library for as3, when I finish I will share with everyone if you are interested. Also I was making a bullet hell game engine for PC in C++, this engine allow you to use both drag-drop designing and lua scripting to make game, this has Windows and some Linux/Unix based OS versions. This engine is little but I designed it to be simple for everyone, sure you can make every bullet bullet patterns same as Echo Bullet just by some drag and drop in a couple of minutes. I don't have time to completed it yet. But in near future It will be ready for everyone! Just want to say it!

Since this time I'm going to spam some little bullet hell shmup / avoid games to get some cash before this month end, not good things for newbie to talk in here but at least there are not much good bullet hell games with flash, so may it's worth to let me distribution my next flash bullet hell games in this topic?

Last thing please forgive for my English, it's not my native language. I'm feeling so hard to say what I really want. :< Hope every one have a nice day! Thank everyone so much!

Btw, about bullets hitbox, i knew about it but it's really hurt me in flash. :<

[trap15]

Little note for most of the bosses: there's no reason for them to jump around the screen maniacally like Glow Squid's second form Take a look at, say, the Stage 1 boss of Garegga for how a boss in motion should move.

[n0rtygames]

Thank you so much n0rtygames, for let me know what I did wrong there! About pacing you are pretty right! I felt the same when I was nearly complete this game but really, don't have much time to improve it. But since you said about this point, sure it will be in my mind when i make next games.

Honestly it's actually not that bad once you play it in full screen. My monitor pretty much lives in portrait mode at 1080p and in that resolution - playing playing full screen and then right clicking to zoom in when the game starts pretty much makes it fit the resolution I'm accustomed to. So the hitbox size works for your game when it's played at a decent size. Small hitboxes can work... see Psyvariar!

Honestly as has been mentioned, pacing was just a bit off and can be fixed with a bit of tweaking of the order bosses attack in. Have to second Trap15 on the boss movements, even though I think I mentioned it. I was affectionately calling it the rainbow-vomit boss... since that's what it does.

What you have here is the basis for a very very good game in the future - so you should really keep it up and try to push the limits of flash as far as you can go. I apologise if I appeared to unload a torrent of harsh criticism - I'm relieved that you found it helpful Always keep plugging away at it and *never* scrap what you've done because it could be the basis for something even bigger!

CB Before:
http://www.chronoblast.com/usingbackdropimage.jpg

CB After:
http://www.chronoblast.com/citystage2.png