Legacy of the Elder Star released on Steam (PC/Mac/Linux)

[invicticide]

Imma get this out of the way first: yeah, this is my first post, I know, spam spam spam etc. But I only just found out about this forum and the game came out *today*, so... yeah. I promise to respond to questions and stuff. This isn't a drive-by!

Soooo Legacy of the Elder Star is a mouse-driven shmup with 1:1 control and unlimited movement speed. It's fast, fluid, and specifically designed for accessibility. It's not really bullet hell; it's more about efficient offense, learning the fastest way to clear enemy patterns using the different weapon combinations at your disposal. I think we've created something very satisfying, and very different from most shmups.



Weapons! On your left mouse button we've got your typical rapid-fire blaster, a punchy-but-slow shotgun, and a charged shot inspired by R-Type. On your right mouse button we've got the star dash (click and drag through enemies to smash them to bits), swarm missile (tag multiple enemies with a homing missile volley), and star mines (deploy up to three then detonate them in a sustained cross pattern). There are also three special abilities which charge up over time (kinda like bombs, except you have a charge-up delay instead of a limited bomb stock); the abilities are giant-ass rocket™, giant-ass beam™, and giant-ass homing comet-thing™.



Scoring: guns grant bonus points for point-blank kills, while secondaries (those right mouse button weapons) grant bonus points for extra kills in a single-gesture or volley. Grazing bullets grants more points, and you get even more for capturing grazed bullets by killing the enemy that fired them. A score multiplier increases over time and resets when you die. Story mode (5 stages, ~22 minutes) has a tiered leaderboard based on certain score thresholds, and shows you how close you are to achieving D rank, C rank, etc. all the way up to S rank.



In story mode you can mix and match your weapons, and the enemy patterns change on every run. It's deliberately designed to be a bit more casual; again, this isn't about mega bullet hell or super hardcore competition, it's about accessibility and satisfying fun. There's also a practice mode (pick any stage), boss rush mode (one life only), and a randomized daily challenge. The daily picks a new stage, pattern sequence, and weapon set every 24 hours, which are the same for every player, and each daily has its own leaderboard. Dailies can be a lot harder than story mode.



You can get it on Steam right now for PC, Mac, and Linux, and it's 10% off for the first week.

I did all the design, code, and music for the game, and hired an artist to do the art and animation. I gather there are some devs (and aspiring devs) on this forum, so if you have questions, I'll be around.

[Shepardus]

Knowing this forum, you probably shouldn't have bolded "mouse-driven." The game looks fun though, and the art is really nice, especially in motion. How long have you worked on the game?

[invicticide]

About two-and-a-half years. Some of that full-time, some of that split with other contract work.

[BulletMagnet]

Apparently on its way to itch as well.

I'd be interested in trying a demo of this; as you say, it's not a typical shmup, but I'm curious how it feels.

[Xyga]

Mouse control isn't popular indeed, but I agree your game looks good ! I like that style.

There's one thing though that hit me right-on as quite unpleasant: the screen shaking on impacts, it's a bit too strong and happens waaaaaay too often.
Personally I can't play comfortably and concentrate on a picture that's shaking so much.
You should add an option to turn it off completely, or to make it happen only on the heaviest impacts.

This is a case of visual feature/effect abuse IMHO, unfortunately quite common nowadays.

Also +1 for a demo.

[Captain]

Heh. With all the weapons and gimmicks it seems like you aren't really making a proper shmup, rather a sort of managemement/action game in a shmup setting.

This is not a bad thing, but might put off some people ;p

Looks good, also +1 for demo. Good luck with the game.

[invicticide]

@Xyga: We actually do have an option for camera shakes! You can either have reduced shakes, or turn them off completely. (They add a ton to the sensation of impact, but some people are much more sensitive to them than others.) Similarly, you can also turn off screen flashes if those bother you as well.

@Captain: I had a bit of internal struggle with whether to call it a shmup, since you do spend a lot of time doing non-shooty attacks (especially with higher-level play) and it's so much more focused on smart offense rather than bullet dodging, but in the end I feel like it's closer to a shmup than it is to any other well-understood genre, and also shmups are where the vast majority of the inspiration came from. (This whole project started after I played DoDonPachi on iOS and realized that 1:1 movement could be A Thing™.)

As for a demo, one is in the works. In our experience at public showings (we've done about a dozen of them now) this is definitely one of those games that takes people from "skeptical" to "excited" the moment they actually put their hand on the mouse.