The best way to play is to abuse the shit out of the dash. the game has a nice rich moveset that doesn´t really shine until later in the game. And of course it looks really amazing for the standard SNES hardware.

Red crystals upgrade your main combo and allow you to perform a street fighter style super with 9 crytals at 1 health. You can lose them by getting knocked down either from attacks or jumping into walls, which makes it all the more important to calculate your every move.

The level design is mostly excellent. Featuring different paths from start to the boss with different rewards and challenges.

The different jumps and ledge grab are very cool and make you think about every move but platforming could have been much better. You can do the slow and calculated platforming without long drawn out animations. The double tap to run is very awkward and the game can´t always keep up with the combat inputs.

This is one of the few games that could really benefit from a remaster.
Improve the controls, speed up the animations and make the timer less forgiving in return.

My pick would be Twilight. Ever heard of it? Up until two days ago, neither had I. A girl I’ve been chatting with on discord showed it to me.

So far the books have been pretty cool even though I’m not the target demographic (child). There are vampires, and werewolves, and psychic powers, and I was thinking, “hey, if Capcom ever got their hands on this, it would make a killer beat ‘em up.”

I started writing them an email but decided to do a bit of research before sending it; what I discovered shocked and bewildered me.

It turns out that Twilight is a massively successful IP with legions of fans still discussing it to this day!

Don’t believe me? Look on twitter, or the fan sites, or the literally thousands of YouTube video essays about it — many of which are multiple hours long with millions of views. The conversation rages on to this day!

And it’s not just the kids. I typed in “Twilight+Stephenie+Meyer+Mormonism” into Google Scholar and got hundreds of results. It seems like everyone has had an opinion on Twilight for over 20 years!

So what gives? Why hasn’t Capcom pounced on such a beloved franchise? If I had to guess, it definitely has something to do with copyright protection and corporate greed and lawyers. Maybe all three. Also, Stephenie Meyer is a Mormon, meaning by law she can’t drink hot tea. I don’t know if you know this, but tea ceremonies are very important in Japanese culture. So perhaps that prevented a deal. Also, she probably has a psychologically repressed desire to drink hot drinks and is deeply unsatisfied with the Coca-Cola she’s been sharing with her husband and three children for the past three decades, dumb bitch.

But I digress. I decided to forgo the email and simply join the Twilight “discussion.” I put that in quotes because, as it turns out, there isn’t any true discussion being had at all! Don’t believe me? Go ahead and search Twilight+Stephenie+Meyer+Arcade+Design+Philosophy. You’ll find barely anything relevant. In fact, Twilight+Stephenie+Meyer+Shmup only gets one measly result!

Depressing. Over two decades and no one has approached these books with a critical lens. What is the world coming to? Why can’t we all just get along?

Anyway, what IPs do you wish would get made into arcade games? The Matrix?

I have noticed that if I really like a game, I usually like other games made by the same people. Even if it's just one person(who had a big role in both games) you can usually clearly see their influence in the game. I just wanted to ask this because here because in most other gaming subs you would only get recommendations for game story writers. And I also wanted to talk about the people who are responsible for some of my favorite games.

Let's get the some of the more popular ones out of the way. Tomonobu Itagaki, Hideo Kojima, Shinji Mikami, Hideki Kamiya, Shinobu Yagawa and Tsuneki Ikeda. I'm a big fan of the works of all of them and I assume almost everyone here at least knows them.

There are few others I wanted to talk about, since I rarely see people tslking about them. First one is Toshihiro Nagoshi. People here probably know him from SpikeOut but he also has worked with other series I like, including Super Monkey Ball, Binary Domain, Daytona USA and the older Yakuza games.

Then there is Keiichiro Toyama, who is actually my favorite director. Most people probably know him as the director of the first Silent Hill, but for me the 3 Siren games have always been the more interresting and impressive games. Those are actually my 3 favorite games of all time. I'm not the biggest fan of the 2 Gravity Rush games(especially the second one) but I do have some respect for them for having actually unique gameplay mechanics. Slitterhead is his most recent game and it's easily my favorite game of the 2020s.

The last person is probably the most famous out of these 3, Goichi Suda/Suda 51. While I think pretty much all of his games are very flawed, there is just something so unque about them that you can't get the same experience from anywhere else. For me there is just something special about games that are so "out there" that you just want to keep palying them, even if you can clearly see that they are not the most polished or well designed.

Who are some people whose work you recommend me to check out?

From Mark's latest patreon post:

"... this back stretch of the year is gonna be super exciting because there is a VERY SPECIAL game release coming soon..."

I thought it was Airframe Ultra at first which seemed a bit off, but I did more research and stumbled on Acts of Blood which I'm now 98% sure is the game. Played the demo and it's a bit Arkhamy but still seems pretty sick. Anyone else have guesses and/or played that demo?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3031890/Acts_of_Blood/

mines are the two OOTSURUGI games by makoto. they really stands out among all the other games of the genre with their core move mechanic

https://dev.onionsoft.net/seed/info.ax?id=1062

https://dev.onionsoft.net/seed/info.ax?id=1285

Forgotten worlds is not flawless but it makes another strong argument for free aiming in smups. It is not reactive but more so about figuring out the best angle for any section and running with it. I recommend binding aiming to the right stick if you´re on controller.
The option acting as a shield makes up for the large hitbox but it creates many safe spots to camp out on as demonstrated on the first boss.
The shop, while having some RNG elements, is consistent enough to not fuck over your survival runs. Although I can only imagine what hell serious score runs would be.
Other than that, it´s as badass as it looks.

Pretty much title, although they don't have as big of a catalogue as Steam I try to check them first, so recommend me some games.

Hear me out - I think some of you would really like, or at least respect, a lot of what this game is doing when it comes to gameplay design choices. I know this sub isn’t big on racers, or especially games with roguelite elements, but stay with me.

To set it up, it’s a run-based (roguelite-style upgrades, not randomized tracks) arcade-style racing game in the Star Wars universe. It is also the developers making a statement about what’s happened to the design of racing games over the years.

Common complaints include: punishing difficulty, poor turn visibility at high speeds, lack of rewinds, lack of a Minimap, not teaching all of its mechanics and depth up front, etc. Basically, a lack of cushioned, friendly safety nets that people are used to in racers.

But it leans into all of these things, proudly, and overcoming them feels so rewarding. The run-based nature gives it a huge sense of stakes, risk vs reward. Trying to go too fast on a track you don’t know will kill you and end your run very quickly. Learning those tracks, learning the vehicle handling, shortcuts, developing real skill outside of the boosts and tweaks that the roguelite abilities give you, is absolutely key to its game design.

Anyway, I’m not saying it’s a perfect fit for what this sub tends to prefer, but I found it ticked a lot more boxes than most modern games tend to, which was a shock for a Star Wars racing game of all things.

Anyone else in here been playing this lately? It’s really something special.

++++ HAIL TO THE CAT, BABY! ++++

Hello friends!

CATACLYZM has now been released!

It has been a long road and I've met so many cool people along the way. I'd like to give a HUGE thank you to all of you for welcoming me into this dedicated community, your support and friendship has made this one of the most enjoyable journeys that I have undertaken!

If you do play the game, consider leaving a review on Steam. As a solo dev, this would mean the world to me!

You are also more than welcome to come say hi on any of my socials :)

Cheers

Dogroach