MARRAS

Hey! I tried the demo, and after playing just enough to get my first 1-life no-bomb clear, the game already feels super fun and addictive! It really makes me want to keep grinding runs :)

The Arcade mode is extremely well-paced, with interesting patterns and perfectly balanced difficulty. This is top-tier shmup design! The visuals are gorgeous, and I’ve rarely seen pre-rendered high-resolution graphics look this good. Performance-wise, no issues at all on my RTX 3060 12GB. (I disable Vsync though, otherwise I get a bit of input lag.) Bullets are perfectly visible, no unfair deaths. Excellent.

A quick note on the hitbox: when I first tried the game yesterday, I had trouble locating the hitbox without focusing directly on the ship. Looking where I was shooting, I instinctively felt like I was positioned higher, at the laser’s firing point. It took me about an hour before I could accurately place myself on screen without constantly looking at the ship. I don’t think this will be an issue for experienced shmup players though, and in any case the game really makes you want to push harder ;)

The music fits the game perfectly—energetic, driving. And I love how subtle the SFX are: you really just hear what matters, like enemies blowing up. Spot on!

The campaign mode is also interesting—great for learning the game and figuring out the patterns. Really original too, very few shmups have experimented with this kind of gameplay (maybe Bullet Hell Monday to some extent, but still quite different). Very cool, but clearly it’s the Arcade mode that makes me want to grind :)

I’d been following the project on the Shmup-STG dev Discord, so I’m really glad I got the chance to test it. Huge congrats for bringing the project this far already, and best of luck with the rest of the development! I’ll definitely be following closely!

This game has a really good foundation.

Movement is very fluid and the speed feels just right in normal and focus movement. I would like to try this out with some tighter patterns (if that is your plan) and see if it hold there, but so far I think it would feel good there too.

Visual feedback:

In the below section, my rapid shot was hitting the enemy, but it didn't seem like it was dealing damage. There was no obvious indication that anything was happening. Once I focus shot, I got the reticle and rolled with it until he died. There was a decent amount of time I was dealing damage and I didn't think I was affecting him and thought maybe I need to take out his side arms first. (watching my replay back I can see the body is flickering blue/gray. During game play I didn't notice this as the overlapping blue shots blended it in with my peripheral view.  Maybe a different color would help? Close to his death he flashes red and that is obvious, so maybe orange before). 

Another thing I noticed is a lot of the explosions outside of my direct view look like shining pickups, similar to the DDP games where you can shoot a point to expose a bee pickup. Not necessarily an issue, but it is a little distracting at first.

I think if the explosions were confined to an enemy this would be less distracting. For example the first stage boss has explosions happening off his model and a little further away as seen below. 

At some points when I switch between focus and rapid it seems I am cancelling bullets but am not sure how that works.

I am looking forward to the release, I think its gonna be a solid STG and will be a day 1 purchase from me at this rate.

Good job.

Another Cave-head, I enjoyed the demo (DD64). My impressions seem to be similar to the other comments.

* When I started the hit box wasn't where I expected it (I think I expected it to be closer to the cockpit). Since I'm focusing further up the screen and not recognizing the player ship past being a blob moving around, the hitbox being closer to the top of the blob might help. By the end of the demo I had it figured out.

* Unfocused shot seems to be lacking in density a little (maybe this is just before any power-ups?) There would be times that I fire at flying enemies a bit and they still reach the bottom of the screen, so they require a bit more attention than I'm used to. Later on I realized being higher up the screen and point-blanking everything increases fire rate (because of the on-screen bullet count?) which made the shots and enemies behave as I expected.

* On the tank mini-boss I was firing at it and hitting nothing, turns out there was a cannon or something on the far side I hadn't destroyed. I was confused for a moment before grazing it and noticing it flash red.

And a few minor bug-ish things:

* In the settings screen I opened the prompt to set something, somehow focused away from the dialog, and because the mouse cursor is hidden I couldn't get back in

* In campaign mode, I lost to the main boss and after the restart a few bullets were still on-screen (they drained away before the actual fight started, I didn't try to catch one)

* End of area 17, was that an upside-down wheelchair mark?

Thanks for the demo, I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next.

Gave it a shot, very impressed! Was looking forward to this demo for a while now, and the one level you have ready (in Arcade mode) is fantastic. 

Some stuff I noticed:

• The controls are great! I love how lock-on works, especially that the range of lock-on seems to be tied to the laser, or not infinitely long like in Ketsui. There's a demand for intention/aim.
• Bullet visibility is high.
• Player ship visibility is low. The hitbox/red orb indicator doesn't stand out very much, so I've lost track of my position a few times despite being a fairly experienced arcade shmup player.
• Moving to the bottom of the screen feels a bit weird. I think I'm used to UI elements being down there.
• As the midboss and boss are exploding upon defeat, you can repeatedly lock onto them, which seems like a temporary bug.

Looking forward to future updates.

This game has been on my radar for some time and now that I've been messing around with the demo I'm even more excited for the full release! Really love the visuals and the bullet patterns are engaging. Stage 1 boss is really fun too.

I don't know how the score works since this demo doesn't has any, but considering the lock-on mechanic and the fact that the demo's boss has many destructible parts, it seems like destroying boss parts will be part of score play. In some shmups this can feel like a chore but in this case I had a lot of fun milking this boss!

Also, I found a kind of silly safe spot on the third pattern. If you destroy all the left side of the boss and then you hug the right side of the screen after the second pattern, the boss will move in front of you making its right side go out of screen, leaving you with only the pink bullets which are static. You can see me doing it in the video below.

maybe making the last pattern grow in intensity as it goes on will help? This way players who don't care about boss milking won't be seeing the harder pattern since they will be focusing on the main body of the boss, destroying it before that point. Again, this is just me assuming that boss milking by destroying parts is going to be a thing, so just disregard this if that's not the case.

Campaign mode also looks interesting. Breaking the stage into chunks that can be played and completed individually is an interesting idea and I can see it being appealing for people new to the genre. It also looks like it can be a very useful way to practice bosses.

As far as negatives go, i really don't have many. Obviously is a work in progress so stuff like sound design and the lack of a visual for the bomb can't be held against it. I can only think of one thing that kind of bugged me and that was the ships visibility.

A lot of the background in this first stage is gray, which can make the ship kind of hard to keep track of. This is somewhat alleviated by the visible hitbox, but even then is really small and can get easily lost when there are a lot of bullets. Cave tends to make their visible hitboxes huge (Deathsmiles, DFK, SDOJ, Futari) even if the actual hitbox is really small, which helps to keep track of where you are on screen with your peripheral vision.

Maybe this is just a stage 1 issue and other stages make the ship pop out a bit more or maybe is just a me problem, in which case feel free to disregard this comment lol

overall, this looks like a really interesting project with a lot of potential and I'm really excited to see how the full release will be like!

As a rabid Ketsui fan I've been eagerly anticipating this demo. The look and feel of playing Ketsui are pretty close even in this early build, which is great.

Pros: 

• Lock-on is a little more predictable than Ketsui's, meaning you're spending less time trying to get the lock to focus on the right target like in that game. Takes some of the guesswork out of locking on, which I view as a positive.
• Enemy bullet visibility is good, and the patterns seen so far strike a good balance between being challenging but not impossible to maneuver through. 
• Ship and enemy design are really good, manages to capture the near-future military feel of Ketsui while having a style all its own.
• The demo level's soundtrack is pretty good

Cons:

• Current build lacks sound effects, without them some of the destruction lacks impact. 
• There's currently a rather pronounced pause when switching to focus shot, it took a bit getting used to. I understand the tension of needing a little delay when switching shots back and forth, but it seemed to take a bit too long.
• Hitboxes might need a bit of fine-tuning, I would sometimes attempt a Ketsui-style wiggle dodge through a wave and get a miss. Maybe that's more me expecting the tiniest hitbox possible, but there were a few times where I got hit by a projectile that it looked like I should clear.
• Campaign mode seemed a little too disjointed with how the levels are just short bursts with an abrupt finish line, but perhaps I'm not understanding how it's supposed to work in the final game. The discontinuous gameplay loop of the demo campaign felt more like Bangai-O, in a way.

Overall:
Super early build obviously, but an extremely promising shmup. As someone who loves Ketsui I can see the influence and it's already doing the inspiration justice while maintaining its own identity. I can't wait to play more with added sound effects and music, as well as seeing all the levels in store (there look to be a lot!).