Author Topic: Feedback: A Visit to the Palace of Spirits  (Read 1798 times)

Feedback: A Visit to the Palace of Spirits
« on: January 20, 2018, 02:23:38 AM »
A project I've worked on for a while now. It is my first stage I've created and I've tried my best to make it balanced but it tends to repeat some of the stuff. It has some fairies, a midboss, and a boss. It's also supposed to be an extra stage. You can read more about (and download it) here: http://www.bulletforge.org/u/twizz/p/extra-stage-visit-to-the-palace-of-spirits

I'd like to have some feedback on the spellcard patterns, the stage itself, or anything you'd like to suggest about it. And since it is an extra stage, I'd like for you to try the spell cards at least more than once just to get the mechanics of the spellcard (Also has 999 lives so you can just fastforward to the boss).

 If you have any questions or errors regarding the spellcards or script then I'd like to hear them. Also the survival spellcard is possible to capture this time (unlike my other script).

Download Link(in case you missed it up there): http://www.bulletforge.org/u/twizz/p/extra-stage-visit-to-the-palace-of-spirits


Re: Feedback: A Visit to the Palace of Spirits
« Reply #1 on: January 20, 2018, 07:09:18 AM »
Played through it a couple times. Generally, I liked it, although my first time through was absolutely miserable. I'll probably still try to do better on this and thus give more detailed feedback, if my own Danmakufu projects don't distract me.

-The stage and the music are super in-sync up until the midboss, which is really neat-looking.
-The worst part of the stage, by far, are the purple lasers. They have pretty slender warning lines that blend into the background fairly well and they deploy very quickly. The only real way to survive them is to memorize exactly when and where they spawn in.
-The midboss is really well done, especially with the music change. The only complaint I have is that its transition into the super fast white bullets can easily catch you off guard if you don't know its coming.
-The rest of the stage gets kind of boring after the laser grid faeries[Which have the same issues as all the other laser faeries] and the repitition becomes more obvious. I'd actually suggest that you replace the repeated patterns before the midboss, since the repitition near the end has more interesting variations.
-The boss herself is, well... I don't really know what her deal is, but she's got a parasol and a frilly dress, so she fits right in to Gensokyo.
-And here comes my main complaint: The script, in general, requires you to do super tight dodges. That's fine, up to a point, but a goodly chunk of the boss' attacks are very intensive micrododging. This kind of annoyed me after the fourth or fifth such attack, especially since the only player you're allowed is Marisa, who really isn't built for such tight spaces.
-The other big complaint I have is how poorly spellcard mechanics are communicated. A lot of the spells have cool gimmicks[At least on paper], but they're nearly impossible to go through blind simply because you have no idea what the bullets are going to do.
-The Hallucination Orb attack is a big offender. Its one of the few attacks I managed to capture, but that's only because of a stroke of incredible luck where I dodged the huge mass of smallish red bullets without meaning to. Its a predictable attack once you've memorised what happens in each phase, but before then it seems incredibly random.
-The first survival attack[Tsukuyomi Machine Something?] is probably my least favourite spellcard. Maybe I just don't get the premise, but it seems to boil down to the following:
1: Warning lasers set up, tell you that the safe spots are above the boss and in the corners
2: After a little while, warning lasers turn into real lasers.
3: Warning lasers set up again, so you try to get into a safespot
3a: You went for above the boss just as she spawned a bunch of bullets. RIP
3b: You went for one of the corners. The boss shoots a bunch of bullets while pushing you towards the edge with lasers, you get walled, you die. RIP
Repeat the above 2-3 times and that's my experience with this spellcard in a nutshell.
-The Garden signs of past and future are both fun and relatively simple, except for the cheapshots at the beginning, which are hard to dodge, especially when you don't expect them.
-And then there's the Rose Surge Curse Spell, which has the most poorly communicated gimmick I've seen in a spellcard since frigging Honest Man's Death. I didn't notice that my movement was controlling the boss' movement until halfway through my second run. Even then, I never figured out exactly how to make the boss go in a certain direction. Its a really cool gimmick, but its super easy to miss. I'd suggest doing something like giving the player a smaller version of the boss' circle thingy or just outright telling the player what's going on with text. Even after I figured out what was going on, there's a super dense cross attacky bit near the middle of the spell which looks nearly impossible to navigate. I suspect that's because I'm overestimated how large the explodey rose cross danger zones are.
-The final spell has a few problems with it. First, there's no clear indicator that the first portion of the attack is a survival spell, which is especially cruel when the best defense against most of the rosesplosions is to hide in the corner. Second, the rosebud thingies fly out from the boss so quickly that its very difficult to get out of the way of one that happens to have launched at your current position, especially if it brought friends with it. The nearly last segment with the slow-motion explodey roses looks nearly impossible, but I did actually manage to get through that part on my second try. The explodey roses are less deadly then they appear, which, again, isn't at all obvious.

I'm certain I've forgotten about at least one attack that I wanted to give feedback on. As I said, I'll be sure to play this more and hopefully puzzle out a few of the more opaque spellcards.