Duality ZF (Xbox LIVE Indie Games) coming soon...

[TodayIsForgotten]

I think streets of fury is like 239MBs, isn't it? to the guy griping on the game, come on man. Atleast give it a shot. I don't think it plays much like a cave game. Can't judge a book...

[Jason]

Speaking of, you guys going to leave an audio slider in the options menu so I can adjust BGM and SFX independently (& mute BGM)? At the very least, is custom soundtracks supported? Some indies don't even do that and it sucks.

Yes, all of this is already implemented.

It's so easy to do custom soundtracks, there's no excuse for any Indie Game to not have this supported. Literally, all you need to do is categorize the music as "Music" and the Xbox 360 handles the rest. Modifying volume at run-time takes more work since you need to code it, and save it, and load it, and have a menu system to interface with it, etc.

[Jason]

I really hate to sound like a jerk about this, but I have to be honest:

Thanks for being honest.

I'm most likely not going to buy this game because all it does is imitate Cave's style, which bores me to death since every person who wants to make a modern shmup these days ends up reminding me of them. However, the multiplayer is done right. But regardless of you being categorized into XBLIG, your product is going to end up being compared with Raystorm HD (whenever that comes out), Ikaruga (which isn't as expensive as Raystorm HD but twice as much as yours if you're going for 400 points), Trigger Heart Exelica (while most of the people who play it go "meh," it does something more interesting than Cave ever does), and Geometry Wars.

And that's not counting the Cave ports that are already on the 360, which is the style you're going for with your game. Or G.Rev's titles. Or Raiden.

Here's the truth:

• I have never played a Cave shmup. I've seen them online for a matter of minutes, and I see slow moving bullets, in bullet hell form, where you don't want to kill things fast since you want the screen to fill with bullets, before converting them all into medals (I assume by killing the enemy that shot them) and then collecting them all. It's more puzzle game than shoot 'em up.
  
  Collecting is fun. I get it. My next shmup may have a lot of collecting in it. But Duality ZF is not about collecting. All that matters is the speed at which you kill the enemies. There are no bonuses. The highest score goes to the person who commits the most damage in the most efficient way: The guy who kicks the most ass gets the highest score.
  
  Thus, Cave is most definitely not an inspiration. So, I'm a little sad that you're not going to buy the game because you believe it imitates Cave. (I like Cave, and I want to play them just to see what everyone's raving about.)
• I don't even know what Raystorm HD is.
• Ikaruga is cool. But it's more puzzle game than shmup. It has no power ups aside from a charge blast. And it has polarity. It's more about knowing where to be than reacting. In this sense it's closer to a bullet hell shooter. The guy on the Internet playing Ikaruga in Dual Play (i.e. controlling both players at the same time) is cool and raised awareness of Dual Play, and that made it into Duality ZF (and inspired the name Duality).
• I downloaded Trigger Heart Exelica last night but haven't played it. I recall seeing it at a friends house one night and being very un-impressed.
• You forgot to mention 1942: Joint Strike, which I believe is our direct competitor. And I'm sure on this smhup forum, I don't need to go into detail of all the reasons this game is just plain bad. I played through it once, and have no desire to do so again. The part where you cannot shoot is just mind boggling for a shoot 'em up. What were they thinking?
• Geometry Wars has shown the world that shmups aren't dead. But, it's just a revamped asteroids clone. But, it shows that simple controls and gameplay can be fun. This re-emergence of all these dual-stick shooters inspired the Multidirectional mode in Duality ZF. Except our game isn't made like a dual stick shooter. It's a real shmup with the control scheme (if you desire) of a dual stick shooter. So you can fight large enemies and big bosses, and swerve the bullet stream while efficiently aiming at its heart the entire time. It's a lot of fun, and you don't get this in the one-shot one-kill enemies in traditional dual stick shooters like Geometry Wars. In Duality ZF, you're mounting the attack, not scurrying and hiding.
• Raiden is an inspiration. The dual weapon nature arises particularly from Raiden 1.
• I don't know what G.Rev is.

In the end, we're willing to put Duality ZF up against any shmup, on the Xbox 360 console, or from the arcades, or from Japan.

[Jason]

I think streets of fury is like 239MBs, isn't it?

I think it's around 120 MB. It cannot be over 150 MB, since that's the limit for 240 and 400 point games. The 120 MB would be from a crazy amount of animation in their sprites, which I give them kudos for. The game play is just really lacking though. I thought Sega showed how it was done in Streets of Rage a while back. I may do a beat 'em up someday, and if I did, I'd research what Sega got right, because in the end, it all comes down to game play.

[Jason]

dai jou bu, I try to be severely critical about my own game, so I would love for you to play and get your feedback.

I am interested in everyone's feedback, good or bad, especially their first impressions, good or bad.... because bad first impressions is what stunts sales. If you like it only after getting around the fact that, say, it looks too Indie or too Raiden or too cheap, then those are things we need to fix.

Be honest please.
We can handle it.

[ZyN]

Speaking of an possible PC-Port what is with the Playstation users and the PSN ?

Maybe after XBLA succes ?

[monkeyman]

Just wading in on the price point discussion:

400 points - If you are looking for as wide an audience as possible then 400 may be a bit much. While the Shmup fans will snap this up regardless, the 'average' player may look at 400 points, compare it to a cheap xbla game and wonder why they should fork out with no gamerscore on offer (though you may never get too wide an audience no matter the price, lots of people just don't like the style of play that shmups offer)

240 points - This seems the better option to me, no comprimising on file size, not so cheap as to seem suspicious, and little enough that people will be far more likely to impulse buy

80 points - Cheap enough that people may question the quality without trying the demo. I don't think this would increase sales enough to cover the reduced price either.

This is just my impression of things, I don't claim to know the market for indie games, nor do I have a clue about business, but since you're asking opinions, I thought i'd put my thoughts out there.

Either way, I wish you every success!

[TodayIsForgotten]

Speaking of an possible PC-Port what is with the Playstation users and the PSN ?

Maybe after XBLA succes ?

I think they are probably testing the waters. I don't know if PSN has a indie section. Duality won't be on the arcade. It will be in the indie section. Totally unrelated.

Again, i just question how many non-shmup players will buy a shoot em up game? You have to wonder what these games would do sale-wise if there were no achievements. Would r-type have sold around 20-30k copies if so? I'd bet that a pretty large portion of sales for games, today, come from achievement players. Atleast 25% up to 50%, easily.

If these non-shootem ups players do buy the game, how long will they play it before they shelf it? Of course, this is assuming the game is good.

In the end, i really don't care what they decide on the price, since i'll be buying it anyway and playing on the leaderboards. If the game has 1,000 users or 10,000 users its all the same to me.

[Erodion]

So enough dancing around the real issue: when's the release date?

[WarBovine]

ZyN wrote:
Speaking of an possible PC-Port what is with the Playstation users and the PSN ?

Maybe after XBLA succes ?


I think they are probably testing the waters. I don't know if PSN has a indie section. Duality won't be on the arcade. It will be in the indie section. Totally unrelated.

PSN is getting a pseudo-indie sections with the Playstation Minis, albeit with a different developer model. More importantly though, I assume that this game is developed on Microsoft's XNA framework which has Windows and Xbox 360 implementations, but does not and will likely never have a PS3/PSP implementation, being a key Microsoft feature and all. So not a straight forward port...

Like most of the people here, I'm willing to pay any reasonable price once this is out. I'm rather impressed with the detail and the care you have put into all the options, like the music volume discussion above or the 1up font discussion. If you have thought about the actual game half as much as the details, its going to be a blast.

[ZyN]

Hmm neverminde I will get a JXB with the beginning of next year

But the "minis" are only for the PSP not for the PS3
And it isn't a indi section

[postman]

postman wrote:
So enough dancing around the real issue: when's the release date?

Any idea, I'm so wanting to play this..........

[Kaspal]

postman wrote:
So enough dancing around the real issue: when's the release date?

Any idea, I'm so wanting to play this..........

you're not the only one dude... you're not alone in that dept.

[Xonatron]

No specifics on the release date, so we are sticking to soon, but it will be very soon this time. There's always something else to fix. And we plan on fixing anything we KNOW will get criticised as a blantant flaw in our game before releasing it. (Right now we are working on ground enemies.) We don't mean to lead you on! I've said this before, and I'll repeat, you all in this Shmups Forum have it worse as we brought the game to you first, so you have all had the longest wait. And we continue to tease you with the game over and over, but that's only because you give the best and most unbiased feedback. You wouldn't believe the feedback that comes in on the xna.com forums, the games that would get ripped to shreads here are getting mostly positive and inspirational responses... and that's what happens when you only go to friends and family for feedback... you don't get the hardcore truth that you need to hear. So thank you again, all of you. I have pushed many XNA shmups to send their games here, but none of bitten. I know you all would do them a service greater than they would know, if they'd only take my advice.

[yyr]

I'm just going to weigh in on the cost question...

...to some people the 400-point price tag says "I'm more expensive than the other one." But to others it says "I'm more expensive so I must be better."

Lots of people are in that second category. Don't sell yourselves short. If the game is better than 80% of the other Indie Games, then it merits a higher price than that of the other 80%.

You will get extra exposure from the sites you plug your game to, as well as possible inclusion in the Contest Finalists area and featured section (I don't see why this wouldn't be featured). In 3 months you can always lower the price if you feel you made a mistake.

An aside: have you considered running any contests to increase interest? I'm working on a Point Blank-style shooting game right now that I intend to sell for $1, and one thing I'm going to do with it is advertise a score competition contest right on the box art. It can't hurt and you'll almost certainly get your investment back.

Anyway... in the end we all know that a lot of typical gamers just don't "get" shmups, and that the ones who do are going to buy it because it's quality. These gamers will buy it regardless of whether it costs $3 or $5, both of which are total-bargain price points for a quality shmup.

Bottom line: if it were me, I'd sell Duality: ZF for 400 MSP.

[Xonatron]

We were just interviewed on CBC Radio One, which aired today, for anyone interested:
http://xona.com/2009/09/23.html

Direct link to MP3 (which may change):
http://xona.com/mp3/2009-09-23_-_Dualit ... erview.mp3

The faster talking one is Jason, and the slower one is myself (Matthew). I'm not sure if we always sound like this, but all I can say is I was quite nervous as it was a TV interview (cameras on us) converted into a radio clip. We'll post clips of our CBC TV spot (which also aired today) soon.

[Xonatron]

Thanks for the input yyr... this is a tough call for us, and we have still not decided on it. Now I know how those people in those reality TV shows feel when they say they haven't made up their minds until 30 minutes before the deadline. Most gaming aspects are hard to decide on, but the decision is easy as we are equipped to understand the pros and cons, but this decisions is truly an unknown one, mostly because we are simply not skilled or experienced in marketing games. I'm sure whatever we choose will be fine, so I am at least ok with that. The only people that will be hurt will be ourselves for not pricing the game high enough. And in 3 months (wish it was 1 month or 2 weeks) we can change the price.

[WarBovine]

Just saw the CBC News TV story on Duality ZF. I thought you two did pretty well: the story was interesting, your ideas came across well, CBC didn't get everything about videogames fundamentally wrong like they usually do...

[No_not_like_Quake]

CBC interview? Shit, missed that.

At least they interviewed young game makers that seem to have a clue.

Edit: Just listened via your site.

Haha, though a bit awkward, CBC did a great job, didn't they? Great interview.

Like I said before, you guys have my support. Get it done when you feel it is done.

[Xonatron]

Here is all our CBC coverage, be easy on us as it was our first time...

CBC TV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqcrKunPKFs

CBC radio (.mp3):
http://xona.com/2009/09/23.html (direct mp3 download; may change)

CBC website:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/st ... amers.html

The reason why they did such a great job is thanks to Ryan Pierce, the interviewer, a true gamer himself. He owns lots of shoot'em ups (many ports of R-Type and Soldner X were a few I recall) and knows the difference between a shoot'em up and a FPS. Find another non-gaming journalist like that. He found our story and requested to the do the interview, so it's all his doing. (Thank you!) In fact, CBC even used the word "shmup" in the radio interview, which we never used ourselves, so he picked that up himself! I was very impressed with him. He was, or maybe still is, an inspiring video game journalist. I think he would do well.

For those who care, in the radio spot the faster talker is Jason, and the slower, lower talker is myself (Matthew).

[lilmanjs]

I loved the interviews

[nrook]

I'm just going to weigh in on the cost question...

...to some people the 400-point price tag says "I'm more expensive than the other one." But to others it says "I'm more expensive so I must be better."

Lots of people are in that second category. Don't sell yourselves short. If the game is better than 80% of the other Indie Games, then it merits a higher price than that of the other 80%.

You will get extra exposure from the sites you plug your game to, as well as possible inclusion in the Contest Finalists area and featured section (I don't see why this wouldn't be featured). In 3 months you can always lower the price if you feel you made a mistake.

An aside: have you considered running any contests to increase interest? I'm working on a Point Blank-style shooting game right now that I intend to sell for $1, and one thing I'm going to do with it is advertise a score competition contest right on the box art. It can't hurt and you'll almost certainly get your investment back.

Anyway... in the end we all know that a lot of typical gamers just don't "get" shmups, and that the ones who do are going to buy it because it's quality. These gamers will buy it regardless of whether it costs $3 or $5, both of which are total-bargain price points for a quality shmup.

Bottom line: if it were me, I'd sell Duality: ZF for 400 MSP.

I agree with this post.

Selling a game at 400 points says, "We are good enough that we are equivalent value to many XBox Live Arcade games." It says, "We are a complete game, not some cheesy XBLIG trash you'll forget about in a day." Jeff Minter faced this sort of problem on XBLA: he released Space Giraffe for 400 points (a cheap price point on the Arcade), and many people played it once and didn't give it a chance, because they figured it was a cheap Tempest ripoff. So he ported it to the PC, and it's now selling for $20.

I might even expect that you would sell more copies at 400 points than at 240 points. Hell, I'd be seriously looking at 800.

[nash87]

another vote for selling it for 400, and then possibly dropping the price to 240 later. the game deserves it! don't sell yourselves short on this, literally.

[Kaspal]

so, guys, any news on the game?...

i know we've been thru this before, but i kinda remember you saying you were gonna release the game shortly after the contest... and i know that you're polishing the game some more, but still, i'd like to know if you have an estimated release time or something, im willing to play this one NOW ... so, please, a hint or something?

[TodayIsForgotten]

so, guys, any news on the game?...

i know we've been thru this before, but i kinda remember you saying you were gonna release the game shortly after the contest... and i know that you're polishing the game some more, but still, i'd like to know if you have an estimated release time or something, im willing to play this one NOW ... so, please, a hint or something?

Judging by the comment made on xbox.com i think this game won't be out until december or early 2010.

[Kaspal]

so, guys, any news on the game?...

i know we've been thru this before, but i kinda remember you saying you were gonna release the game shortly after the contest... and i know that you're polishing the game some more, but still, i'd like to know if you have an estimated release time or something, im willing to play this one NOW ... so, please, a hint or something?

Judging by the comment made on xbox.com i think this game won't be out until december or early 2010.

do you mind pointing me to such comment (sad sad thing if its true!)

edit: at moments like this, i wish they just announced the game when the contest was on, and not a year ago...

[fog]

so, guys, any news on the game?...

i know we've been thru this before, but i kinda remember you saying you were gonna release the game shortly after the contest... and i know that you're polishing the game some more, but still, i'd like to know if you have an estimated release time or something, im willing to play this one NOW ... so, please, a hint or something?

Judging by the comment made on xbox.com i think this game won't be out until december or early 2010.

Yeah where is that comment? I've looked on the XBox.com thread and there doesn't seem to be any hint at that sort of delay.

What's the official work guys?

[Elixir]

I have never played a Cave shmup. I've seen them online for a matter of minutes, and I see slow moving bullets, in bullet hell form, where you don't want to kill things fast since you want the screen to fill with bullets, before converting them all into medals (I assume by killing the enemy that shot them) and then collecting them all. It's more puzzle game than shoot 'em up.

So you watched Galuda 1 or 2, or Mushi? I assume you mean those break points like the pods in Mushi Stage 5 which clear the screen of bullets, or the nests in Mushi Futari Stage 3 which clear the screen as well. It's not so much puzzle as it is timing. Not all games have this. It's actually a good thing because it saves you from being driven up a wall, or swamped (play dodonpachi).

Collecting is fun. I get it. My next shmup may have a lot of collecting in it. But Duality ZF is not about collecting. All that matters is the speed at which you kill the enemies. There are no bonuses. The highest score goes to the person who commits the most damage in the most efficient way: The guy who kicks the most ass gets the highest score.

Thus, Cave is most definitely not an inspiration. So, I'm a little sad that you're not going to buy the game because you believe it imitates Cave. (I like Cave, and I want to play them just to see what everyone's raving about.)

Ikaruga is cool. But it's more puzzle game than shmup. It has no power ups aside from a charge blast. And it has polarity. It's more about knowing where to be than reacting. In this sense it's closer to a bullet hell shooter. The guy on the Internet playing Ikaruga in Dual Play (i.e. controlling both players at the same time) is cool and raised awareness of Dual Play, and that made it into Duality ZF (and inspired the name Duality).

So your game is basically the same as the thing you're contradicting yourself over, "killing enemies as soon as possible", great.

You forgot to mention 1942: Joint Strike, which I believe is our direct competitor. And I'm sure on this smhup forum, I don't need to go into detail of all the reasons this game is just plain bad. I played through it once, and have no desire to do so again. The part where you cannot shoot is just mind boggling for a shoot 'em up. What were they thinking?

So your direct competitor is an XBLA shmup which nobody liked, including yourself?

Geometry Wars has shown the world that shmups aren't dead. But, it's just a revamped asteroids clone. But, it shows that simple controls and gameplay can be fun. This re-emergence of all these dual-stick shooters inspired the Multidirectional mode in Duality ZF. Except our game isn't made like a dual stick shooter. It's a real shmup with the control scheme (if you desire) of a dual stick shooter. So you can fight large enemies and big bosses, and swerve the bullet stream while efficiently aiming at its heart the entire time. It's a lot of fun, and you don't get this in the one-shot one-kill enemies in traditional dual stick shooters like Geometry Wars. In Duality ZF, you're mounting the attack, not scurrying and hiding.

Oh come on, Geo Wars is hardly what I would call a shooting game. It doesn't even scroll, so with this logic you could call Metal Slug a shooting game. It shows that you can use flashy HD graphics and it'll sell well because "things explode into a million pieces", which people like. The only reason I play Geo Wars 2 is because of Pacifism mode, because it gives me something to actually DODGE, instead of rounding shit up over and over.

Raiden is an inspiration. The dual weapon nature arises particularly from Raiden 1.

"I liked this as a kid, so I'm going to put it in my shooting game! Whee!" which brings me to..

I don't know what G.Rev is.

In the end, we're willing to put Duality ZF up against any shmup, on the Xbox 360 console, or from the arcades, or from Japan.

I'm sorry dude, but it doesn't seem like you know much about shooting games... in general. I'm not an expert player, but it seems like your inspiration is to piece together elements from other games, like you said--Raiden, among others--but ignore elements of others, like Cave titles, and yet again you want to pit your game against every other shooting game out there.

90% of the Indie titles are bad. Maybe that's why they're getting low ratings. You can't even play the games offline because it FORCES you to have an active internet connection in order to play. If you get disconnected while playing one of the games, it fucking exits the game. This isn't a problem with your game, but EVERY Indie title out there. This would be better suited for a PS3 PSN exclusive (or whatever they're called). Or maybe even WiiWare, since the Wii has been gasping for games for about a year now.

So, I'm sorry, but wanting to be the king of the ant hill still makes you an ant. If you want your game to succeed, and I mean really succeed, you need to market it for the XBLA instead. Or perhaps the PSN store, but my knowledge of that is weak. I know a lot of people here will not purchase this, despite it being a shmup, solely because you're forced to be online. And do you know why you're forced to be online? So that Microsoft can check that the certificate for the game and your online account match.

That's something which XBLA games don't access, despite a) console profile ID, for attaching leaderboard scores to, b) your ticket to the full game and not the trial (remember: demos are the full versions, but locked) and c) achievements and stuff like DLC, which Indie games can't have.

But you probably won't listen to this, and it's probably still an Indie title. Don't expect miracles, and don't bother trying to compare yourself to independent developers like ZUN, Cave, Seibu and G.Rev, when you don't even know who some of them are.

[yyr]

You can't even play the games offline because it FORCES you to have an active internet connection in order to play. If you get disconnected while playing one of the games, it fucking exits the game. This isn't a problem with your game, but EVERY Indie title out there.

This is false. You need to be connected to Xbox LIVE to start an Indie Game. Once you're in, you're in for good, even if you're disconnected. The only exceptions are:
1) if you purchased the game on a different console from the one you're on and therefore can't play it unless you're signed into LIVE, or
2) if you're playing a Creator's Club version.
And by the way, the majority of Xbox LIVE subscribers don't care about having to be signed into LIVE to play things, because they want to be signed in anyway. So I don't think this significantly hurts the audience. For those people who do care: wireless bridges can be had for ~$50. Make your life easier and grab one already.

This would be better suited for a PS3 PSN exclusive (or whatever they're called). Or maybe even WiiWare, since the Wii has been gasping for games for about a year now.

And when Sony or Nintendo release free development tools that allow us to create games that run on retail consoles for fun and/or profit, we'll develop for PS3 and Wii also. But they haven't, so we can't right now, at least not without a whole lot of hoops to jump through. I know I'd rather develop games than jump through hoops.

[Jason]

Elixir,

Thanks for your feedback.

I have never heard of Galuda 1 or 2, or Mushi. If they have pods that clear the screen of bullets, I didn't steal that idea. The bullet-clear wave only occurs in Duality ZF when you reach max firepower and attempt to power up again. The bullets are also cleared on any boss explosion, since I dislike the notion of having to continue to evade once you've already destroyed the boss. Many games have bullet-clears; usually in the forms of bombs, which Duality ZF notably lacks on purpose, so you can't use them to save yourself from an attack you'd rather not evade.

I have not contradicted myself. Duality ZF is about maximal damage and evasion. The gamer who most efficiently kills the enemies gets the highest score. No other game is like this. Duality ZF pushes the player firepower and the enemy firepower to the extreme, while maintaining one-hit-kill and a larger than 1-pixel hitbox without bullet-clear-bombs to ensure you have stand and fight and get the best experience possible.

Geometry Wars is not a scrolling shooter, but it is a shoot 'em up. It's just an indication that the entire genre of shoot 'em ups isn't dead. This doesn't mean that these same people will move onto a true scrolling shoot 'em up and love it. But with a multidirectional mode in Duality ZF, we are going to attract a lot of that crowd. For the first time these people will see a multidirectional shooter with enemies that require more than one hit to kill; they'll see bosses and crazy attacks that they can evade while efficiently aiming at the boss's heart. This is a new experience, and I'm sure it's going to grab the attention of a lot of the Geometry Wars fans. A lot of our beta testers, some of whom hate Geometry Wars, mention that this is their favourite control mode.

Me liking a game as a kid differs from your average kid, since I've been developing a game code about proper game play and control since I was 7 or 8. I used to hit the arcades as a teenager just to analyze the graphic engines and ponder over how they handled perspective, which led to my development of the Full Tilt scanline racing engine based off of the OutRun arcade when I was in grade 8. I was more interested in the design than in playing them. When I saw Raiden and Task Force Harrier, I knew they hit a high note, which is something we're trying to exploit in Duality ZF: Give as much firepower to the player as possible. This seems like a flaw since you can kill everything quickly, but you can balance this with immense firepower on the enemy side. With a 1-hit-kill, even at max firepower, you are always vulnerable. This is the most exciting gameplay possible.

Regarding the spread/laser duality of Raiden, most games have this, but we extend this to ultimate control where you can decide on the spot which of the two, or of a hybrid inbetween, you desire. This pushes the "give the power to the player" philosophy of allowing the gamer to make optimal use of his weapons. Because the player is so powerful, we can raise the difficulty of the enemies. The result is an extremely satisfying accomplishment, since you're dealing with very strong foes that would normally be impossible.

I would argue that I do know a lot about shoot 'em games. Inspiration is not a method of stealing ideas by taking parts of other games and putting them together in one. I've been a hard core shoot 'em up fan since the days of Space Invaders; it's my favourite genre. But shooter after shooter hits the market and they all fall flat. While I like Raiden and Thunder Force II the most, they still miss out on a few areas that annoy the gamer. So, when I sat down to make Duality ZF, I am making my own game. I am adding in concepts that I know work (rapid fire rate, easy capture of power ups, easy control of firepower, maneuverability, etc) most of which are not present in any shoot 'em up on the market, and I am avoiding implementation of things that are bad (large hit boxes, slow moving player, lack of weapon control) some of which are present in games that were inspirations. Most games offer to show what not to do, instead of what to do. I might praise Raiden, but do you really think enemy bullets stuck to the camera rather than the world are a good thing? It's annoying. Slow moving fighters are annoying. Even Raiden III and IV's scoreboards are atrocious, why not just rank every game you can play so you can see how well you're doing? These games have major flaws that Duality ZF will not have.

I am sorry if I'm ignoring elements from Cave titles that I've never seen. They just are not prevalent in Canada. However, it was not our intention to make a bullet hell game like the Cave games. We don't want the ability to destroy all the enemy bullets on the screen at will to help you out. We don't want the game to be about collecting. It goes against the style of play we want. As far as shooters go, we are making our own game style that has a #1 priority based on game play and optimal destruction. The scoreboards will reflect this, and the master player videos that are sure to appear will showcase this. No chasing fairies and delay-shooting in our game. This is why I'll put Duality ZF against them all, not just the ant hill. I am not comparing Duality ZF to any title that I've never heard of. I don't want to compare it; it's a different game. But I believe it will match and surpass the fun factor. For the first time ever, the guy with the highest score is he who dominates the most. Isn't that how it should be? If Duality ZF doesn't fly, keep in mind this is our first commercial game, and Duality II is on the horizon.

P.S. We are trying for a XBLA release, and are well aware of the XBLIG restrictions. We hate them as much as you do.