Reviews for DN8:Pulse

[djpraiseadelik]

Now For A Proper Review (actually in this game's case I'm adding to a lot of proper reviews so thanks to the people before me). Played the first game and was looking forward to this one by the way.

Design:
Loved the nod to TouHou in the design and gameplay. Besides that I loved the music (catchy but not mind-numbing) and the sound effects. Reminiscent of Galaxia/Galaxian to me. Enemies didn't vary much, even bosses, but the color definitely contributes to keeping the game active and fresh.
Gameplay:
It's Bullet Hell but the Graze concept is definitely a nice touch as it adds a very subtle risk/reward setup (graze for bonus lives but added risk of dying). I also like the two tiers concept i.e. lower tier for defensive/newer players and the higher one for offensive/expert players. The perks concept seemed limited but early on it gets xp/graze fast then switches over to better defense and offense (hint use first three then next three once dying isn't so much of an issue). And who doesn't love homing missiles in a schmup?

Overall 4.5/5 (having played up to final 3 levels in low tier)

ProTips (2nd one I've done first being for Pirateers. I'll keep it up unless ppl tell me they don't like it. But really who doesn't like free tips?)

1. Said it before but I'll repeat. If you're noob/seminoob to scmups and/or bullet hell games go low tier on your upgrades so you get pods for added off/def and shields for def. Won't get challenges/xp as fast but you'll live longer.
2. For pro's (like me somewhat I went low tier for 1st playthru I know) go high tier for all the attack power and a little defense (as far as I know which is up to double shot with 2 spread upgrades).
3. Remember your hitbox (i.e. it gets hit you die): it's small trust me. So just moving slightly in any direction will let you avoid hits, especially with shield/pods, while still grazing enemies. Bosses same way.

Again great schmup and has some replay value. Keep up the good work.

[ZEGMAN]

I followed your weekly game updates so I was pretty hyped.
The effects and 3D are very nice and seem to work very efficiently! Well done.
Overall it's a very fun game

Squize responds:

So you're the person who reads our blog ;)

Thanks, hopefully it lives up to your expectations, we try not hype things too much, but it's always hard to tell.

[sweetcommando]

fun game but it goes abit overboard with the whole "bullet hell" thing. i know bullet hell games are meant to be frustrating and hard but this doesnt just require you to dodge bullets but also go near them to get power ups. im not gonna lie, that is a great idea but it is not suitable for a game like this. also the 3d rendered backgrounds are low quality and it looks unprofessional. my computer is pretty good and i played on highest possible settings but it doesnt feel right.. i think that you should have stuck with the background style from the previous game.

Squize responds:

Thanks for taking the time to play and review the game man.

The graze mechanic is only really for extra lives, you don't need to do it to gain power-ups.

As to the backgrounds, I really like them ( Can I say that without sounding like a cock ? Oh well, too late :) ), but it was a large learning curve doing them as I've never touched 3D before.
With the backgrounds on the original I had a lot of little experiments floating around on my HD that I could use, originally with this one I wanted to do the same, a cool bit of eye-candy on each one, but coming up with 12 different 3D effects was just beyond me, so I opted for the one background.
I know it's not exactly Eve quality, but stage3D is like the release of a new gen console, you can get things working but no one has any clue how far we can push things, and it's going to be like that for a while yet.

Thanks again for taking the time to write up your thoughts.

[Omegathorion]

Considering how Touhou-inspired this game is, it's strange why you opted for the visual style that you went with. I think it was distracting. In Touhou, the only shiny things were bullets: nothing else was a color that would grab your attention, so you could focus completely on bullets, which is optimal for a bullet hell. But in this game, there are so many glowy things. Your ship glows, your pods glow, enemy ships glow, enemy ship pathlines glow. As if that weren't enough, bullets are initially set to glow even more. Don't get me wrong, the art style looks cool and I can see where you're going with it, but that doesn't belong in a bullet-hell game where it's absolutely essential for your players to be able to focus completely on bullets and bullets only.

Everything else is built nicely. I would have liked a bit more vertical space, and some more varied bullet patterns.

Squize responds:

Thanks for the great review.

To be honest I've never played Touhou ( Can't even remember seeing it, sure I must have though ). Visually the main influence for this was Geometry Wars, when it kicks off in that and it gets really busy it looks so beautiful.
( Obviously the sprite style from GWars has been done to death in Flash, as coders can even do that themselves, so we wanted a nice chunky pixel style to offset all the glows and the background ).

More and interesting bullet patterns would always be a good thing to add, it's a weakness of both this one and the prequel. I've tried to find the medium ground between "True" bullet hell, which is quite niche, and something that anyone can pick up and have a good go at.
Because we've got a bigger screen than the first one we can fire a lot more bullets, but I think me calling it a bullet hell is more of a convenience thing, it's easier to label it like that, it's more a bullet hell lite.

[queenofbabes]

This is great! Gameplay is good, graphics are excellent. Flashing the path of oncoming enemy ships is a nice touch, as is the upgrade tree. Both 'main' paths are fairly balanced. I also really liked the touhou-style graze mechanic, which is not commonly seen in flash shooter games.

Medals-wise, so far 'all in a line' and 'the overlook' do not seem to be working, you might want to look into it.

One gripe, though, is about the boss warning sign. Yes, putting in some words in a foreign language might seem exotic to you, but they are just nonsense words. At least take the trouble to put them through google translate and make sure they at least make some sense. What you're doing reeks somewhat of snobbery and is incredibly annoying to anyone who understands that language.

Squize responds:

Thanks for the review. I'll look into those medals, I'm surprised at the Overlook one not working as that was in theory the easiest one for me to code. Odd.

As to the warning text, causing any offence was literally the last thing on my mind. It was purely a stylistic decision, hence us having it in Braille on the left too. It was meant as a visual nicety rather than literal text. Please accept my apologise about that, lesson learned there.