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[X3N]

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!

[pacpacfujishima]

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).

[worstplayer]

I'm wondering how skies might become hidden. 

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

[deathtotheweird]

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

[cactus]

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.

[knight]

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

[John Lee]

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.

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.

[ithamore]

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.

[DarkFalzX]

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?

[Farmergnome]

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.

[gunmaggot]

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.

[anosou]

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

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

[gunswordfist]

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

[pacpacfujishima]

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!