New Danmakufu Project From New Person

[professor_scissors]

Hello! I am Professor Scissors - you may or may not have seen me floating around the IRC channel the last couple months, but this is my first real foray into the forums.

Anyway! I'm working on a Danmakufu game. It's still in its early stages - all I have is danmaku for the bosses on Easy and the Extra Stage. I have no stages, no music, no art, no sprites, little to no sound, and no backgrounds! Playables aside, all the characters are original, so I'm looking for sprite/artist people, if anyone's interested.

But what I have primarily come to do today is NOT trying to abduct other people to draw stuff for me! No, I have come to share my Extra Stage boss battles, in what form they currently exist. I am equally motivated by a desire to be all "hey check this out" and a desire to get feedback so that I can fine-tune these properly.

Extra Stage Midboss: Mahiru Kuwashima

Mahiru is a dancer and a rain spirit, showing up in the main game as a Stage 4 Boss. Having fought the player inside a cave before, she comes back here, her power increased by being outside in a rainstorm. Three spellcards, no nonspells, usual midboss faire.

Extra Stage Boss: Kyokukou Nagazui

A Kirin and the younger sister of the main game's final boss, Kyokukou's ability is the manipulation of electromagnetism. Boasts the same ten lifebars, ten spellcards, and comparitive lack of actual story significance as most Touhou endbosses.

Download Link

As I said, no art, so both bosses will look like ExRumia for the moment. Also, I'm not intending for this to be the HARDEST BOSS EVER or anything; overall, I'm shooting to make the game comparitively accessible for less experienced players. For the EX bosses, I'm aiming for about the same level of difficulty that Imperishable Night hit on its EX stage.

Thoughts?

[SupahVee1234]

I really liked the spellcards and the non-spells, but to be honest they're ALL very hard for me. I love the design though, well done.

[Naut]

I really liked the spellcards and the non-spells, but to be honest they're ALL very hard for me. I love the design though, well done.

Alright, this about sums up what most people are gonna say.

Sorry for not responding for so long, but things have been busy. I really like the theme of the fight, electromagnetic danmaku is fuck win. I have a big problem with all the non-spells because there is very little indication as to what direction the bullets are going to move. Now I know it's a really small repeating pattern, but it really is a giant mindfuck when all the walls look the same. I'd say you could easily half the speed at which the bullets move and it would still be hard as balls. Couple that with the XXX21s shooting everywhere... Every nonspell is gonna be a bombfest for anybody who doesn't spend hours grinding each pattern into their mind.

The spells are very cool. I'd be careful with all the curving danmaku you've made though. Curving bullets are really difficult for most people to handle, and should be used sparingly. Now I know that your curving bullets match perfectly with your theme, so instead of getting rid of them, I'd suggest slowing them down. There is no need for each pattern to repeat so fast when they last a good while anyway. In addition to that, don't feel you have to make every pattern really fast/really dense, or a combination of both. Many good patterns are made without tens of thousands of bullets _{(I feel like I'm commiting heresy right now, by the way)}.

The main reason I'm suggesting so many difficulty changes is because this script is damn hard, and is an extra boss. Most extra bosses have a really simple gimmick that, when you figure it out for each spell, most spells will become trivial. This boss fight is more like "alright, I know the gimmick, so when that bullet gets here.... BOMB X X X X X X YEEEAHHH!"

tl;dr, tone down the difficulty, this is far beyond "extra stage" level. Extra stages aren't above lunatic, fyi :V

Great work, even if it is extremely hard for almost everybody.

[Stuffman]

Hello there, allow me to bump your otherwise-ignored thread, as I finally got around to playing this. :V

When it comes down to it I'm just not that good a touhou player so my opinions may not be that useful in constructing an extra stage, but here they are.

The midboss is pretty standard, I think the dense wave in Typhoon may be too harsh.

The extra boss on the other hand has a lot of interesting ideas. I enjoyed most incarnations on the attack gimmick, but when it gets really narrow it's kind of a pain in the ass.

Lightning Rod is really cool visually but I didn't even see the reversal effect at first because the fastest orange bullets are really tough to get around.

Kusanagi I thought was one of the more playable ones. Looks neat too.

Equipotential starts off fine but gets kind of unreasonable at the end, and it's a hard card to recover from since you have to dodge the orange lines while being unsure where the blue rings will respawn.

Fission Reaction is my favorite card by far, the split gimmick was surprising and interesting (I actually pulled Naut aside to go "hey look this is neat"). Getting whacked by white bullets while dodging them is kind of an issue.

Pole Reversal looks super cool but is practically unbeatable, at least for me. Most people have a lot of problems with dodging opposite-direction danmaku, and you throw it fast and dense.

Storm Gates I thought was a neat approach to a survival card at first, but then arrrrgh four directions. I would've preferred it it alternated between bullets being shot at you from the top and bottom.

Anyway if you want to get more attention in the future, add some bells and whistles, most people get tired of looking at EXRumia on default background with no music.

[professor_scissors]

Thanks for the feedback! Ironically, my unconscious inclination is to make spells too easy, but being aware of this, I think I overcompensated, making everything much harder than it needs to be.

Anyway, I've taken as much of the advice into account as I can in creating an updated version. Still no bells and whistles, but hopefully the balance is better this time:

Download link

Changes since last version:

• Typhoon made a bit less nasty.
• All nonspell main pattern speed decreased by a third, and the XX21 bullets made less frequent, slower, and less curvy.
• Fury of Heaven is less dense.
• Lightning Rod doesn't get quite as fast.
• Kusanagi starts with a longer sword but doesn't grow as quickly.
• Polar Attraction made more manageable AND more interesting.
• Equipotential made simpler. Maybe too simple now?
• Fission Reaction now actually gives you time to dodge the divided bullets before the next wave hits.
• Storm Gates longer but more varied/fair.
• Aurora Blaze is a bit less dense, and gives a little more warning when it switches patterns.

Did I do better this time? Overcompensate again in the other direction?