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My friend Renard made a videogame! It's Dash-Da-Dash DX (http://renard.teknolust.org/ddd/), a mash-up of sprites, music, and sound effects into a love song to arcade mechanics. This is his second game, and his first "finished" freeware title. Comes in 2 modes: DX, a slower more puzzle-type game, and EX, a nonstop onslaught.

Been playtesting it before release, and I like it. Pretty fun and easy to learn.

wohooo... fantastic arcade fun!!
i highly recommend this one!  :gentleman:

tell your friend to not use stupid installers! put the game in a zip!!

Seconded.

As for the game itself, I'm having lots of fun with it. So much in fact that I think it deserves to be frontpaged. This Renard guy is probably the illegitimate son of Jeff Minter and Kenta Cho.  :lol:

One small issue though: The game's entire scoring system hinges on the gems, but in my experience, they appear too randomly. Building up a decent a fever combo was too luck-based for my tastes.

For those that are curious as to how the game came about and where everything is from, the list of sampled games and shit is here (http://renard.teknolust.org/ddd/note.html).

Nice! I think more games should use this "mash-up" or "sampling" approach. Part of the fun with this game for me is looking for sprites and sounds I recognize.   ;)

so kaizen linked it to RPS, who apparently liked it (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/01/24/ta-da-dash-da-dash-dx/)

Really cool game, lots of fun to play! It's just one sweet polished package, lovely. Apart from the mesmerizing visuals (be sure to play at Effects Quality 5!) and nice soundtrack, I especially like the variety of bosses.

There are just a few things that bother me:
-Do purple gems appear randomly? Are combos just about getting gems as quickly as possible? If not, I think these should be explained in the game, because I thought maybe you only get combos if you collect gems without stopping in between them or so, and maybe the frequency at which purple gems appear depend on my performance, but I was always unsure, which doesn't feel nice
-I don't want to confirm my name after every death, it's only me playing, anyway. Instead of an extra button press every time, I think there should only be an extra button press if you actually want to change it
-Why do I have to use keys at all, when the mouse is all I need to play, anyway? At least being able to use the left mouse button to start the next round instead of pressing Enter every time would be a lot more comfortable

[edit]
Does he use all the music with proper license? It's quite a remarkable bunch of high-profile commercial music for a freeware game, especially considering the separate mini-soundtrack download.

If he doesn't, the soundtrack download isn't a good idea at all...

Don't get me wrong, I'm personally not too uptight about "copyright infringement", but major record labels often are. It'd be a shame to see this game C&D'd.

hey guys, thank you for the kind words and suggestions :] i won't be updating DDDDX at this point unless something serious comes up, since i do want to move on, hahaha


they appear about every 15 seconds or so (provided yellow gems are on the playfield), and the combos are about getting gems as quickly as possible, yup indeedy. you can see that the more gems you get, the higher your multiplier above the player (it drops as you don't get any), and the higher the combo, the more OKAY! signs are lit in the background. hopefully that helps! :]

regarding the "legality" of the soundtrack - the soundtrack itself is entirely unlicensed (as is everything about the game), and it's distributed as a DJ mix, which are, in the electronic music scene, seen as 100% acceptable. legality is another thing, but artists and labels are very keen on letting DJ mixes fly :]

thanks!

I see. So far it seemed to be the best tactic to evade the gems until a purple one appears, then snatch that to clear the field and quickly get all other gems.

But, the more I play the more the difficulty bothers me. I never managed to "beat" a boss, and often when I quickly need to dodge some bullets I would click just outside the playing field, thus not moving at all. Did you intentionally make it so clicking outside doesn't do anything, instead of at least making you dash to the border?

I think the game would benefit quite a lot from just a few tweaks.

i had some difficulty with the clicking on the borders, and got it as close as i could without there being this one bug that i couldn't find a way around where the player could click just outside of the playfield and avoid everything for a fairly infinite amount of time. like i said, i won't be updating it past the point it's at right now unless something truly gamebreaking comes up. i've already moved on to a much larger project :]

a bunch of other folks have beaten at least two to three bosses on the scoreboards, so i'd say just keep at it in that respect.

just made a little tribute video  :beer:
(http://img808.imageshack.us/img808/2594/dashdadashdx.jpg) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y68egXkm_Lg)
http://www.pixelprospector.com/2011/04/dash-da-dash-dx/