Reviews for DN8:Pulse

[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.

[Redgrant64]

Fun, quick little time waster, nothing too outrageous. I like the music and the overall look, especially the backgrounds. Unfortunately the perks don't really help much. I also liked the little "light path" that shows where the ships are going. It's novel, helps you plan your next move, and not to mention it looks pretty cool too.

Squize responds:

Cheers, and yes that's exactly what it's meant to be, if you have 15mins fun playing it then it's more than done its job.
And yeah, I was really pleased with how the paths worked out ( Its always a nice surprise when you code something and it works better than you planned. Pity its so rare that happens :) ).

[CharlesFernando]

Great game, but I find it funny that my pods are more powerfull and better than my ship, why the ship doesn't have the pod powers? But again, great game.. nice upgrades.... but something I would not recommend to epileptics lol

[NTT]

Addictive game! Beautiful graphics, great controls, and plays smoothly on my heap-o-junk PC...but the music is awful and really irritated me. I love DnB, but having to listen to short loops over and over :/

Squize responds:

I think the music is either love it or hate it I'm afraid. I'm glad it played well on your machine though, that's always been the concern with doing a stage3D game. Cheers.

[OneOther]

It's nice that you made a sequel... but it's more a graphical upgrade than anything else...

For starting, the perks... some are useless, and some usefull... but maybe not as perks but as evolutions of the ship.
- 5 lives: certainly useless, or if the player isn't good but he will go into the defensive way for finishing the game. When you know how to graze, it become useless.
- Double XP: Good perk, but maybe for later in the ranks, when it become harder to level up in rank. I've been fast rank 20 in 1 complete run.
- Double graze: Well, useless (or usefull) if you know how to graze, usefull (or useless) when it's hard. (depends of the player...)
- Double shield: Useless if you don't take the shield...
- Rear diagonal & Homing missiles: Shouldn't be perks... maybe they should be in the evolutions.

Then come the evolving tree... nothing new to the first DN8. And that's a bad point for people like me who played the first one and maybe wanted something new:
- There's, again, the Super Redrum... why don't we got other ultimate depending of the tree line? Like a "Slow-mo mode", "Triple Fire", "Atomic Explosion" or anything else...
- Maybe another treeline like "Utilitary", giving defensive & offensive power at the same time, and there goes the Homing Missile and Rear diagonal, where we can adds Tail Drones firing lasers front/side/back, Pulsating shield that send back bullets for 1.5 second when touched but less charge that the original shield (2 maximum)... only exemples, but it's certainly possible to have more evolutions
- Offensive tree can be defensive and defensive can be really offensive... I'm speaking about the defensive drones and the side/rear drones. Maybe the defensive drones should be in the defensive tree (letting the player having a ship really hard to touch) and the side/rear drones in the offensive tree (more bullets fired -> more destruction).

The challenges... has more challenges, but they're a lot faster to fill compared to the first DN8. The only one not filled yet when tipping this message is the "Combo King" challenge. (but I gonna have it fast too...)

The levels, at the start, are nearly like the first DN8... maybe have an all new serie of levels? (or randomly generated levels... it can be great and make every new game unique)

Well... I think that's al I have in mind. Maybe a next game with all this could be really nice. (it can be risky if the players prefer having the same old tech-tree...)

Also add an "old-school" option... for having the same graphism of the first one. It would be nice. ^^ (Not that I hate the new graphism... but I prefered the old ones...)

Squize responds:

Excellent review, thank you.

Yep, being perfectly honest it was a way to learn the new 3D tech in Flash rather than a full blown sequel. We had no clue what the outcome would be regards compatibility etc. ( Turns out 80% or so of players can actually play it properly ), and we really couldn't afford spending too much time on a game using brand new tech with no knowledge how it would be received.

As it turns out, it was difficult to sell and it's not spread well, so I think it took about 8 weeks to do and that's with re-using a lot from DN8 ( Very little code, but things like the level tree / power-ups etc. ) so I think we took the right decision. If we'd have done a full blown DN8 II and it went like it has then I'd have lost even more money on the game.

So yeah, we were a "Little" bit cheeky with this one as we had to balance out the risk of using stage3D, and I'm glad we did to be honest.
Maybe next year when stage3D games are more common and if we've got enough ideas we could do a proper sequel, but there's nothing planned right now.

Thanks again for the review.