[Show] Pyroblossom

[alillm]

Another month, another game! I hope you guys aren't tired of seeing them pop up here all the time yet.

This one is a vertical shmup, actually it's my first V shmup to be released despite having started about 6. As usual I will let the game do the talking but I very much value your feedback .




http://www.altarcade.com/play.php?game=pyroblossom

Cheers!

Ali

[Squize]

Congrats on the NG front page mate.

Excellent work as always.

Squize.

[Son of Bryce]

Great game man! Digging the flight patterns on the enemies.

I feel the difficulty for the first boss ramps up too high. Thought the pattern was excessively complicated compared to the rest of the stage. The bullets trail blurring really throughs me off.

For the second stage, I wish you would have changed at least the background color. Changing the background helps me feel a sense of progression.

Keep pumping these out man. Your games are still fresh.

[Sietjp]

We aren't tired of your posts alillm, each time I see one of your topic, I jump into it. And I'm never disappointd. I love everything in this game.

[divillysausages]

i like the game, but i was able to get through a large amount of it by just sitting at the bottom center of the screen - all the enemies eventually cross your line of fire. the same with the boss - i just had to dodge the occasional bullet

[ImprisonedPride]

Was this the one you told me about? I hope it was. It's excellent!

Let me start with the cons first. I've noticed you've started using the screen-shake and while I think it's awesome, it does give me the feeling that the game is actually sluggish when I know it shouldn't be (2.7MHZ 3GB RAM on Windows 7 in Firefox). Maybe it's just an optical illusion.

As far as nitpicking is concerned, the input-name text box doesn't have the font embedded unless you wanted it that way, but on my screen I couldn't see the bottom 1/3 of the letters. Also, before mission 4 when Red says "Consider it done" you forgot a period here. Hey, I said it was nitpicking.

Pros: BULLET HELL! You played this game right into my heart while mixing a lot of the elements from your previous games that I loved (Mainly from A Typical Wednesday Afternoon and 41st Reality). You really hit the nail on the head.

I'm just curious, but how high do the weapon upgrades go? I was waiting for the helper heli's to get upgraded to beams also, but that didn't seem to be the case (I only made it to the 2nd beam weapon; the thick one after you get beam).

Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful. Going back for more now. Great job.

[charlie_says]

Another excellent effort - (although I'm not a huge fan of this type of game as I'm way too old, and my reactions aren't up to it...)

I found it difficulty to differentiate between the enemies bullets and my own sometimes (colour, not direction obv.) and I agree with what IP said about the font for name input...

But, that's just nit-picking. It's very good indeed.

[ImprisonedPride]

Another excellent effort - (although I'm not a huge fan of this type of game as I'm way too old, and my reactions aren't up to it...)

I found it difficulty to differentiate between the enemies bullets and my own sometimes (colour, not direction obv.) and I agree with what IP said about the font for name input...

But, that's just nit-picking. It's very good indeed.

This was something I resisted from mentioning since it was such a core mechanic of the game. When using Psycho, most common bullets completely disappear from the array of colors flashing on the screen rapidly.

Also, disregard my statement about the weapon upgrades; I finally took the time to examine the HUD.

[ImprisonedPride]

Major Bug Alert:

While playing level 5 (could have been 6, see picture) and facing the boss, I heard the "gun upgrade" noise and lost my level 2 beam (the one that's 5 parts wide). See the picture:





Also, I tried to die to correct the problem, but the same thing happened. There were plenty of the little + objects to grab and if I grabbed all but one I got my beam back. If I got the last one, the same thing happened and my beam disappeared. Since they're drawn to the ship if you're close enough, I couldn't get all but one with 6 guys left... Am I missing something here? The whole level my upgrade bar was full on the right-hand side.

[Son of Bryce]

Found post about Pyroblossom on IndieGamer.

[Ray Beez]

I umm.... am going to dare go against the grain here and say that while it's technically a good game, and reminds me of 1943 series, it's missing something to make it FUN.

[alillm]

Thanks for all the feedback guys.

Squize - Cheers buddy , it's nice that they seem to have noticed me there.

SOB - The difficulty is a love it hate it thing. I have plenty of people complaining it's too easy, but yea it is pretty hardcore so sorry if you found it a bit tough. The backgrounds were something I really wanted to change, but the brownish cloudy background worked so well that I found it too difficult to come up with 5 more that were easily repeatable and worked as well.

Sietjp - Thanks mate that’s very encouraging!

divillysausages - Cheers. I think in most shooters you can get away with being still for periods of time, and it's definitely not possible to stay in one position for too long. Again it's a difficulty issue where hardcore shmup fans find it too easy, but casual players find more than 10 bullets on the screen to be a brain overload.

IP - Yes it was . Thanks a lot man, I didn't notice the text box issue, oops, bit late now. I'm glad you enjoyed it. The slowdown I think is an optical illusion a lot of the time, though it might well run slow for some people. It's the same on the boss where it shoots fast bullets followed by slow ones, it looks like the games slowed down.
Unfortunately that losing your gun problem is a really bug that somehow slipped through. Basically I thought I'd capped the upgrades but I must have deleted some code by accident at some point and so it's possible to upgrade past the maximum number of weapons causing it to not know what gun to use. It's easy to fix, but it's too late now that the game has spread .


Ray - I'm sorry to hear that. I guess like anything you can't please everyone. Shooters are my thing and not everyone's a shooter fan but thanks for giving it a go.

Ali

[Awoogamuffin]

Brilliant game- immediately enjoyable and really captures the feeling of vertical shooters

I agree with son of Bryce that a change of background would have been appreciated, but to be honest, I can't really fault you on the graphics of this game.

The most impressive thing is you did it in a month! I'm so jealous! I've been working for close to six months now and I'm still a way away from finishing my game. I hope I'll get to your level of efficiency one day. Do you code full time or is this a hobby for you?

Right, I'm going to have another go

[ImprisonedPride]

Allilm, I see that you commented about the gun issue on another forum. Sorry for making you repeat yourself. As far as the game speed goes I have to agree it's an optical illusion. Although, I could still argue about the gameplay of A Typical Wednesday Afternoon. I swear that games fps is controlled by the amount of objects on the screen(and not in a laggy way).

I'm going to have to keep trying for that #1 all-time. I had #2 at one point and I see I've been pushed to #19. Care to relay some tips on high scores? I'm not seeing where the difference of 100000 points comes from; I don't buy any lives, rarely miss an enemy, and don't I die on a complete play through of the game. Does Psycho have something to do with the amount of points your given?

[alillm]

Awoogamuffin - Thanks for the encouragement. This was actually quite a long development time for me. I usually spend less than 3 weeks on a game, sometimes as little as a day or two. It just depends on what you're making though .

IP - No problem. Regarding the score, psycho doesn't do anything to it. Just make sure you hit every enemy. Also the later bosses are worth a lot of points but I'm assuming you're completing the game so that shouldn't be the issue.

Ali

[Pazil]

Oooh maaan. All those bullets trip my eyes out so bad. One of the coolest games I've played recently! SO MANY BULLETS. Awesome!

[blazes816]

I don't really have anything helpful to say, I just wanted to say that this game was insanely fun, even though I'm terrible at it.

[alillm]

Thanks guys . Always good to know that people are enjoying what I do.

Ali