Bullet Spike Demo / W.I.P

[rikkusguardian]

Made by - novice developer - Rikkusguardian
Character Artwork by http://www.furaffinity.net/user/jice
Character coloring, coding, story, interface, ect by Rikkusguardian
Inspired by Giest118 Bullet hell game My Little Pegasus http://sandbox.yoyogames.com/games/1981 ... oponypachi
Made in three months for a school project, though with hopeful intentions that people would notice and like it, but because it didn't, it'll be scraped (unless there is some interest in it...)

Trailer http://youtu.be/T1YHt3kS7ig
Full Story gameplay http://youtu.be/fPGKKtjyqbs
Demo Here https://www.dropbox.com/s/h3hwga9ac0vwz ... 0Spike.exe

I made an attempt to make the filesize smaller, i learned at the very last minute of posting this on YoYogames that i could change my files to ogg using (a very frustrating) recoding with Caster add ons. However i'm a novice developer , the backtracking and frustrations was too much for me, and I'm unsure if i finished it, or even if the music will play on anyone's PC but my own. The link above does, but 200mb is intimidating to everyone other than me.

SMALLER filesize of Demo (Unsure if it'll work) https://www.dropbox.com/s/7id2rs9e2wl73 ... 0SPike.zip

Controls
ENTER to advance text and menu
ASWD to controll ship and Numpad 7 / 8 to fire
-or-
Arrow keys to control ship and Z / X to fire
-or-
Any combination of the above to move and fire.

Disclaimer
This is a fan-made game is based on the My Little Pony: Friendship is magic series. If, for some reason, you don't like ponies, large file sizes, novice developers, high resolutions, visual novels, not-so-old-school graphics, photoshop, games with stories in them, its not recommended that you play this. But Bash away at your hearts content.

Although i have a very powerful PC, i have tested this on smaller, weaker builds and with the exception of the text being less comfortable to read because other people didn't have screens that support 16:9 (And because you cant letterbox the game to maintain it's ratio on square screens.) I was able to runs this pretty smoothly, even on PC's that was only dual-core with 4gb of ram and integrated graphics card.

This is just a project i worked on for school, so it only contains the bare-bones of a game. DO NOT expect an Arcade Mode, Score system, chaining, CC loops, bombs, ect (I forgot what you guys call it @_@), unless there is enough interest in it that people actually want me to make it a full game.

[Cagar]

Alright I tried it.
Nice try, now put it in the recycle bin.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The text is unskippable (ponies ugh, zzzzzzz...), there's no visual indication when you take a hit (you just lose a life segment unceremoniously), the enemy faces look like they're on serious drugs, but the shmup system is... a start at least, if more thought were put into gameplay. The controls at least work well.

The focus is clearly on it being a visual novel drawn by someone with an obvious fetish for children's cartoon ponies turned into extremely busty, curvy humanoids. A visual novel with a number of spelling mistakes, that is; because I was forced to read the inane text, I noticed that "I" hadn't been capitalized at least once, spelling mistakes in the words "especially" and "backward", an instance of "didn't" missing the apostrophe, a character name not being capitalized and then later properly capitalized in the same sentence, etc. If you're writing a visual novel, which should be focused on the writing, you ought to proofread it multiple times and have it proofread by multiple people.

This is just a project i worked on for school

If you showed this to your peers or a teacher, particularly with that... 'artwork'... that displays an amazing lack of judgement.

[rikkusguardian]

Ah, i apologize. I didn't mean to waste my time like that making something in respect to you guys. Though i dont think i want to get rid of it that quickly since i put so much time into it.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The issue is that there wasn't much thought to the gameplay - the game engine is fine, the ship controls alright and fires fine, but there's one short level with a half-assed interface (why is your life indicator at the bottom of the screen where your ship is likely to move into it??), no scoring, etc.

The reason Giest118's game is good, regardless of whether you like MLP or not, is that it's a love letter to Ketsui and Dodonpachi in terms of bullet style (hence the title, Kizuna Doponypachi), scoring mechanics, looping, etc, and that it's a gameplay-focused shmup that happens to be MLP themed, so even non-MLP fans can appreciate the effort and the bullet patterns. Unfortunately, your game wants to be more of a visual novel with a shmup sort of thrown-in, but neither element feels really polished. More time spent on the in-game assets (art, gameplay, bullet patterns, etc) rather than the visual novel side would have resulted in a better game.

Because this relates to game design in general, it's worth addressing this from the introduction thread:

And of course, the scores itself in shooter games, or any other genre don't seem important to me, since it had no impact in the game beside bragging. Maybe it's just because i don't see the value of a high score yet. I will however, make scores be actually useful in my game, once i get around to it, but that's for later.

Scoring is fun. The main appeal of shmups is that they are games that require reflexes and skill; in a good game, a fun scoring system is an additional skill to learn that makes the game unique. A lot of shmups 'teach' you to score by rewarding extra lives for reaching certain score values, but even in games without score-based extra lives/extends, the scoring itself can be just as much fun as learning to survive the game. I don't just play something like Futari cause dragons and bugs are cool, or Espgaluda because I love magical gender shifters or something - I play them because their scoring is fun and rewarding just as much as learning to navigate the bullet patterns is.

I'd strongly recommend you play something like Giga Wing, Gunbird 1 / 2, or a Touhou series game, both of which incorporate storylines into the gameplay (character dialogue and endings even change depending on which characters you play as) without adversely affecting the gameplay itself. Other games like Mushihimesama Futari or Ketsui have a strongly thematic plot, without having much in the way of actual dialogue (usually using long endings to flesh things out, or character dialogue at the start or in the middle of the stage), and as with many of Cave's games, are not simply "kill all teh aliens". A lot of modern shmups have plots that try to go beyond the simpler ones in early arcade games, but at the end of the day, they're generally not a good genre for getting across detailed plots, so you're better off focusing on the actual gameplay if you're making a shmup.

Even shmups with really, insanely bizarre themes or endings get a lot of credit for their solid gameplay, so at the end of the day, that's really what matters most if you want your game to be recognized, especially if your game has a niche fanbase like MLP... but if it's supposed to be MLP:FiM universe, why is everyone human?? It's not even mentioned or explained.

[Cagar]

First thing you should do, is removing the trollface from that tie