TIGSource Forums

Hi all,

I'm looking for some feedback about this new shmup in development, initially for the PC/Windows platform, it's inspired by classics of the genre like Raystorm, Darius, Thunderforce, Radiant Silvergun and Ikaruga. It's being made by independent developers Luis Carlos Zardo and Augusto Bülow, friends of mine, and it is in advanced Beta stage. It will feature 8 stages, several weapons to choose from, dozens of enemies and end level bosses. Estimated release time is March 2010, and although available initially for PC/Windows, possible ports for iPhone, X360 and Wii may be possible.

Some screenshots:

(http://i.imagehost.org/0061/razor1.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0342/razor2.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0283/razor3.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0416/razor10.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0052/razor11.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0052/razor11.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0188/razor13.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0715/razor14.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0278/razor15.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0225/razor16.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0011/razor17.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0316/razor4.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0798/razor5.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0447/razor6.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0548/razor7.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0653/razor8.jpg)
(http://i.imagehost.org/0124/razor9.jpg)


It'll be released through a small publisher of casual games as a download-only release, and it will be priced accordingly, in the 5 to 10 bucks range, a bargain if you consider the overall quality of the game. We'll be needing testers to evaluate the level design, hunt bugs and give advice, preferably seasoned shmup players and veterans. :)

Btw, "Razor 1" was an attempt for the Commodore Amiga platform in the mid 90's to compete with the likes of Team 17's "Project X", but sadly it never saw the light of day.

This is indie gaming at its best. Thanks in advance!

Looks neat. But isn't it odd to name the game Razor 2 if the first was never released?

It's purdy. :durr:
But: It's considered bad manners to just post about a game without introducing yourself or otherwise getting resituated into the communitron. Y'know, we don't want no people just abusin' our people for advertisement, so, let us see who you are... inside >:D

Wouldn't it be a little more educated to introduce yourself first (http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=45.0) and then advertise your game?

:-X Stop copying me, you insufferable anime interrobang creature!

I didn't even see your post, Inane  :whome:
What are you talking about you depressed douche.  :ninja:

Well this looks pretty sweet.  Hopefully you aren't a one post wonder here to just drop off a promotion for your game though.  Because if that's the case, we'll have to send you to the island.

Holy Ikaruga! Those are some clean aesthetics!

heh that's a nice introduce-yourself thread, indeed was a bit rude to drop in and just post about the game...

But it is not my game, it is from some mates, I'm just trying to put the cat out of the bag and unveil this little gem of an indie game they're hidding for no reason lol.  With their permissions, of course. :)

I've just uploaded a gameplay video showing my not-so-good shmup skills:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMb5Q4GDb4w

Does it looks euroshmup or j-shmup ? :)  The lead game designer sure prefers j-shmups, but in another forum someone said it looks euro.

Anyway, thank you guys for the replies so far! ;)

Oh it looks like HOLYSHITHUMP. Which means awesome. REAL good for indie! I do want to play, they've got a website of their group?

Right now the screenshots are a good deal more exciting to me than the video.  Compared to the games it's inspired by, the pacing, patterns, and music seem a bit lackluster.  The graphics are nice, but slightly repetitive (and a little generic).  These are probably the traits that make people think euroshmup.

Also, I think the bullets need to look more substantial and less "ghostly".  Right now they look like particles blended over the background... more like special effects rather than bullets.

Looks slick, though!  Just concentrate on the pacing and the variety.  I'd much rather play a shorter game that was properly paced. :handthumbsupL:

Thanks for the feedback, guys!

Indeed the slow pace make people say 'euroshooter'. The problem with these is that they 'extend' the levels with the slower pacing to have more 'gameplay hours'.

But the aim is to be j-shmup at its best, it'll even feature hand-drawn anime-like characters in the cut scenes and intro story. :)

lol? Filler is never good, a 20 minute challenging shooter is better than a 2 hour shooter.

Just be-aware that no one plays a shooter for it's story, so if you add anything like that much sure you don't keep it to long, or make it easily shippable.
The less cutscenes the better the game  :handthumbsupL:

Do get someone good to do the character portraits. I've seen several games where the in-game graphics are excellent (as are yours, judging by the screenshots) and the character portraits are embarrassingly bad. Your graphics guy is obviously the daddy when it comes to modeling spaceships, but he might suck at people.

Yeah, there's nothing worse than art that tries to be anime but falters badly. It's worse enough when something is badly drawn, but when it also looks like a cheap wannabe-ish imitation of something, it's a double whammy. Make sure your artist can do it correctly, or else it will stick out like an eyesore.

I think the graphics look fantastic; the repetitive abstract backgrounds are one of the things that turn me off shmups in general. If they make the bullets a bit more readable then it will be just perfect.

I'm sure you're probably aware that "euroshump" is pretty much a pejorative... it's not just the slow pace, it's things like the excessive special effects that make it harder to tell where the bullets and the bad guys are, and the forgiving 'shield' that means you can get hit and keep playing, and the apparent very quick progression to powerful[-looking] weapons.

Apologies if I'm repeating stuff you've already heard or knew already, but the general feeling amongst shooter fans is that euro games use crutches like damage gauges (no single-hit kill), powerful weapons and slow pace to prop up a game that would otherwise be impossibly hard because it's too difficult to see the bullets, or because the game design isn't tight enough and sometimes you end up with impossible walls of hurty things that you literally can't dodge past, or because they didn't spend enough time balancing weapon-damage against enemy-health and you're expected to sit for half an hour in front of each boss and/or leave 90% of the oncoming bad guys to fly off the other side of the screen 'cause you don't have the firepower to hurt them. And then that they add in loads of gimmicky features like "one billion weapon options!" or "sparky particle effects!" that sell the game but do nothing positive for the gameplay at all.

So my advice, in order of importance, would be to:
- make sure it's easy to distinguish bullets from everything else as an absolute priority
- make sure it's easy to tell where the bad guys are (and the player is!) at all times
- do a lot of testing/adjustment of the weapon-strength/enemy-health balance
- pace levels such that it's only just possible to wipe out everything that comes at you, but it is still possible.
- give out power-ups sparingly
- don't flood the player with a lot of options/extra weapons/etc.; stick to a very small number.
- avoid having "wait at this section until X" sections which aren't boss fights.


Of course, I'm just jumping to conclusions about how this game plays based on the video, and it's very generic advice (and I've failed to follow some of it myself, in the past). So I hope I don't offend, and I hope I'm not telling you stuff you already know...

Thanks again for the feedback, guys!

Sar: very comprehensive reply, I'm sure the author will consider you in the beta test team ;)


The attack patterns programming and how they affect gameplay, is one of the biggest challenges in writting a shmup.

I know the author since my teenage years (we're in the 30's now) and I can say what are his favourite games:
- Ikaruga
- Philosoma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosoma)
- Raystorm
- Uridium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uridium) 2 in the Commodore Amiga
- Einhänder

I'm also a very old-school gamer and the first shmup which I think made the genre grown in me was Zanac (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zanac) :D  Also always loved Gradius and R-Type series. So I've suggested some horizontal scrolling stages thrown in the mix (like Axelay or Terra Force (http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=terra-force&page=detail&id=2872) ) but this will probably be left for the sequel, Razor 3. :) 

This looks very impressive! While the explosions need a little polishing, I can definently see myself playing this, especially if it comes out for Wii!

I'm wondering how skies might become hidden.  :noir:

Looks nice. Please do make more bullets on screen at once (more enemies, more intense pacing). I think the bullet effects look fine. Backgrounds look great!

new video on Hard settings, meaning much more enemies and bullets on screen, and impression of more intense pacing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkzzyLgl7Hc

still need to fix the hitbox size on player ship (too large).

So many bullets can't see the background = hidden skies. Pretty clever name I think.

this second video you showed makes it look a lot more fun than the earlier one.

It does indeed look very euro trying to be j. I pretty much agree with everything Derek said.

I personally prefer japanese style over euro... The things I disliked the most:
- Generic ship designs
- Slow, boring or weird movement patterns for enemies
- Uninteresting bullets (varying the shapes and types is good, big, small, long, laser beams, big laser beams)
- Unaesthetic bullet patterns (the bullets almost never form an interesting shape or pattern)
- Lack of phases (The ship moves constantly up to the boss, and the enemies keep on coming at the same pace the whole time, the boss does have a few movement patterns, but they are stiff and kinda boring, not "blow up the small cannons, and a hatch opens and brings out the awesome mega cannon" or "watch out! he's about to ram you!")
- Most of the graphics do look good in the screenshots, but they aren't implemented very well
- Menus and intro lacked appeal for me completely

I'm sure euroshmup fans will love it, though. And it does have the potential to be something I'd love too.

The screens look good. As others have said you should make it faster.

I agree, I want characters that I can romance mix 'n match to my heart's content. Anime romance is the true heart of any japanese game, after all, shooter or no. Take a look at the Touhou series - eminently shippable characters.

The first level in the video made me think of the first level from Raiden Trad (with shield and energy gauges added [which I like having in shmups] but without its traditional power ups), and the player's ship design reminded me of the player's ship in the early 2D versions of Silpheed. Despite nostalgia, Raiden Trad and Silpheed aren't my favorite vertical shmups, which represents what I felt about the gameplay in the video. Sorry, I probably won't like the game, but there might be some shmup addicts looking for their next new fix that will.

Since there hasn't yet been any mention of a demo, I hope they are planning to release one. Otherwise, how do they plan to compete against all the commercial shmups on the internet with demos and freeware shmups? Some would think a the expectation of demo for a commercial shmup goes without asking, but there are always developers who try to sell on hype alone.

I didn't like the audio warnings: they were too slow. The best example was when it warns about the boss on first level: part of the boss appears before the warning begins and a majority of it is visible before the warning is completed. A simple warning sound plus a vocalized, efficient word or two (about the direction only of a wave, what critical thing is about to approach, or a short clue about an irregular attack) would be more useful.

Hey!
From an artistic standpoint the screens are a tad generic. The colors are very flat and uninteresting - sky = blue, earth = brown, metal = gray, smoke = black - this makes the game look cheap, like something put together out of PD resources (though obviously it isn't). Your buddies have to look at some jSMUPs or professional HDR photography for color reference help. It can be something as minor as tweaking the ambient light color, or overlaying the screen with some color filtering, really, but it would help a lot.
Also - you mentioned the portability of the game - how about..*gasp* - a Dreamcast port?

Looks pretty okay so far, biggest problem I see with the game is the backgrounds to be honest, like a few others said they are concealing alot of the forground/gameplay level action because of way too much contrast on them.

Try dulling the backgrounds out by staying away from blacks/giant fucking huge additive lights/harsh shadows/harsh highlights and it will be way easier to see whats happening, theres this giant additive glow on the ground on the right of the screen also which consumes projectiles when they pass over it making the projectiles invisible  :'(

Foreground looks cool, background needs some mclovin.  That being said thats basicly crit for the first level, I think using the sky background in the second level makes a huge difference but there still is a huge amount of contrast on the giant ship you fly over.

Looks good to me - the only things that stood out as being rubbish are the enemy animations, which are pretty clearly unfinished so not a big deal, and the bump-mapping on the ground which I thought was pretty vulgar.  In terms of machine design it's fine - way better than your average doujin shooter and competitive with commercial releases (it looks better than the latest PSP Darius, for instance). The ship designs are generic compared to what?  The games this is paying homage to?  Come on.

Based on the screenshots it looks like a big bag of tasty awesome.  :handforkL: :handknifeR:

I'd be interested in a 360 port to XBLIG or even a Mac port. Can't get enough shmups   :durr:

Looks incredible. I'm surprised all the screenshots didn't kill my pc but I'msure the actual game would.  :screamy:

Bumping this topic because the game is about to be released in July 19, through Steam, where it is already showing up:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/34920/

Congratulations to the developers for completing this impressive shmup!