XITILON IS GETTING BETTER?
There's a borderline in gaming...
A small space that divides good from bad...
An area known as the "Neutrality Space", where games are not bad, but not good enough either.
A limbo that separates wonders from disasters.
Xitilon's back on the B-Grade shmup scene and this time is the low budget shooter Bubble Fish.
Hyper-Rapid Fire Bubble Spray!
If you're familiarized with either my reviews or Xitilon's games, talk about Xitilon is, first of all, I warn you, uttering a "By God..." in capital letters, got it?
With capital letters, bold text, underlined and font size 220 or more in Microsoft Word.
But, there is a chance for a trash game developer to redeem himself from his previous fuckups? Bubble Fish and Crushborgs are the answer to that question. Right now, let's talk about Bubble Fish.
The gameplay of Bubble Fish is a basic horizontal scrolling shooter where the objective is to survive as much as possible against a relentless onslaught of sea creatures like other fishes and jellyfish. While your standard bubble shooter is fast in terms of bullet speed and firing rate, you're given power ups such as a pearl bubble that is more powerful and moves even faster, but with a slower firing rate. Power ups that increase the size of your bubbles and even shoot in a ridiculous fire rate that makes is a murderline of bubbles like "OOOOOOOOOOO", or even a slight homing capability, along with the Contra-like 5 way Spread shot. The difficulty of this game is based on throwing you enemies with fast speed that increases with time rather than pelting you with bullets. The hit detection is very decent and what's best, it has after-hit invincibility. Seems like Xitilon made a more tolerant game since it now carries extra lives and even hit points. Having three lives and four heart points are well received, giving you better chances to make progress and have a little fun until the innevitable happens. The only flaw of this game is the lack of bosses. Spending 10 minutes without fighting a large sea creature makes the game quite boring and repetitive. It also lacks of a plot as well. I mean, ¿Why is Bubble Fish fighting?, ¿How did he got those powers? ¿Who's behind the invasion? None of those questions get an answer, making the plot proper of a case for Unsolved Mysteries.
The least thing I care is if I had a godlike accuracy.
Especially when you're ran-over by jelly and pufferfishes.
Although there's no continues if you lose all your lives, you're given a final status of how many bullets you fired, how many hit their target and even tracking the enemy encounters. While this is interesting and evokes the Galaga era of shmups where you're given similar statistics, in modern shmups those are irrelevant since the only thing you have in mind is to shoot and hope you get rid of your enemies.
Lethal jewelry in action.
Graphically, we can notice a HUGE improvement over his previous works which I slammed before as the game tries to look 16-Bit like despite having simplistic sea background but the in-game sprites are above the amateur league of "I wanna be like the SNES", and the bubble sprites look pretty well made, so that's one point in favor for Xitilon. You can also notice how Xitilon makes a basic parallax scrolling in the background and the promo art looks well made. That's really surprising from him. However, there ARE aspects that require to be fixed. First of, the Heart indicator. I think Xitilon painted them grayish blue to make them fit on the sea theme of the game, but having red hearts like any other normal game would hurt? I mean, it would look more brightly and most of all: ALIVE.
The fonts also need to be improved. In the main menu it look like the cheap "Big sized" Arial on an old computer while in the game we have thin fonts.
The music on the other side features two songs: The main menu one is a calmed xylophonic-like beat that fits quite well on a beach scene on an RPG or visual novel, but its a bit strange on a shmup. I mean, its not bad, but it gives you the sensation of "How playing R-Type with Bossa Nova music would be like?". While in the game, we have a different, yet beach-like song that fits much better to the shmup pace of the game. Believe it or not the background song used in-game is "Ethernight Club" by Kevin McLeod. Yeah, this is one of those games where we see the rare instance of having copyright-free music as its soundtrack. It's like thinking of a Dune game with the song "Virtutes Instrumenti" which sounds Dune-like already, and in this case, Xitilon made a quite good choice.
Overall, it might be another Shovelware trash shooter of the bunch, but its more than clear than Xitilon is really trying his best on making a low budget game. Bubble Fish looks like your cheap, mediocre shmup, but at least there is some efforts on trying to lift up a game. A silent testimony that a good game needs effort and time more than budget. The miracle is happening indeed. First Crushborgs and now a shovelware shmup that doesn't look too much like shit.
So, 6 R-9's are going to be good news for Xitilon. Just keep practicing before making another game.
Comforting Thought: At least it cost you 1 dollar.