Shmupacabra

[snauts]

For a last half year I have been making a shmup.
I have completed now two out of three levels.
Demo builds are available here: http://piepe.lv/shmupacabra/

[ptoing]

Just gave this a try and fiddled through it and here is my input:

• I think you need a scoring system instead of the stars = lives thing. Something that feels a little less random. I know the stars are not random, but getting them repeatedly in some places is fickle, and it seems to be luck more than skill.
• Please put in an Autofire button so that there is no need to tap when you want the spread shot.
• The speed when you do your concentration shot is a bit sluggish, I'd make it a bit faster.
• Everything is relatively low contrast, so sometimes you get hit by a fast enemy without much chance of escape, esp when you are holding fire.
• The graphics are pretty polished for what you got, but they are horribly bland. It would help if there was more variety in the backgrounds, the first level city scape could have destroyed buildings, shots of artillery coming down in the distance, stuff like that works nicely as long as it is subtle enough and does not fuck with the foreground.
• The story is bland and not very well written and on top of that not really needed. I think that most players would rather have some action faster, or if you want a break then you could have a transition scene where you see how the ship rises up into the atmosphere and into space. See Gunlock/Layersection for a good example of this.
• The music is horrible, I hope it changes. A bunch of riffs for the main music and something that sounds like a somewhat metally protest song for the bossfights does not impress.
• You have what I would call "uninformed indie scanlines" which to me always look odd. The darker bits between real scanlines are EMPTY, there is no information. So to get something looking like real scanlines you would go from an image that is scaled up twice and then remove every 2nd line, which would be quite basic, but is closer to scanlines than what you have. And then from there you can do other things to imitate colour bleed and stuff like that.
• The levels drag a bit.
• The hitbox is placed a bit weird under the cockpit. I could so far not get a really good feeling of where it is exactly

All this said, the game has potential, but needs quite a lot of work. I would try and spice up the contrast between foreground and background a bit, make the playership more colourful to make it stand out more. Blue or red are classic and obvious choices. The bulletpatterns also could use some more variation and there could be more mix between aimed fix patterns and spam. Atm it is a bit onesided on the side of aimed fixed stuff most of the time.

Looking forward to more.

[snauts]

Thank you for your opinion ptoing! I will try to fix as many of those issues as possible.

[snauts]

I kind of, sort of finished all levels now...
http://piepe.lv/shmupacabra/

[BPzeBanshee]

I gave this a go a few days ago. Performance was good and it ain't too bad a game!

I do however agree with everything ptoing said above. The final stage was better in that regard, adding the dead bosses was neat although I couldn't kill them before they left the screen, but the first two stages do still drag.

Music I wouldn't exactly say is terrible per say, but it really isn't much of substance other than a guy with good guitar skills (did you make it yourself?) having a solo recording session.

[snauts]

I do however agree with everything ptoing said above.

Well, when I decided to make bullet hell shmup I have been into shmups for only three months (and I am 30 years old) I loved beautiful bullet patterns, but I found almost all of them overwhelmingly difficult. And I still do. I have never paid any attention to scoring in shmups, because I still strugle just to 1CC easiest of them. I am programmer by occupation and that is why artwork looks like it looks - it is programmer art. Music was made by my friend, who is a programmer also and playing guitar is just his hobby. All your and ptoing's criticism is valid, its just beyond my capabilities to fix most of it.
Thank you for playing anyway!