I probably come across a bit grumpier than I am as I’ve been banging my head against a brick wall for nigh on 5 hours trying to find what’s causing the controls to bomb out (huzzah, I think I’ve just found it too) and throw in trying to explain oneself in text without being able to emote properly is a recipe for disaster :D

Really, all comments good/bad/somewhere in the middle appreciated as it all helps me learn. Sorry if I didn’t come off that way.

I think there’s something more natural about the stick controls that does it. I prefer keys myself (Speccy kid through and through, see) but the analogue movement/4 key thing *is* probably a bit odd compared to pad controls. I’ve been playing it for a month none stop so I’m not the best judge.

I dunno! One thing is for certain that it won’t exactly hurt to offer a choice, so I’ll do just that.

There is just something a bit offish in the movement of your avatar when carrying lateral momentum in one direction and the holding down the opposite direction’s key… you see to sort of strafe turn and the space between your shots becomes wide (a bad thing in my 15-25 minutes of experience).

Also, I was really surprised how differently the avatar moved about when I picked up the gamepad. Did you do playtesting with one?

“The idea (and I’m really not sure if I’ve been successful in conveying this at at all) is to nudge you into taking a more aggressive play style not to do a Geometry Wars forced defensive sort of thing.” -Oddbob just now

I approve, and it works.

Heh, I dunno what’s going on there. Unless there’s a stick plugged in somewhere and it’s picking up the input from that, I’ve munged something up with style :D

Will have a looksy into it! Ta.

TSDM, sorry you didn’t like the controls, man.

It was, for better or worse, a very conscious decision to choose that scheme. The idea (and I’m really not sure if I’ve been successful in conveying this at at all) is to nudge you into taking a more aggressive play style not to do a Geometry Wars forced defensive sort of thing.

What I intended was (as I say, dunno if this worked) that folks would quickly realise that you don’t actually need precision control over your shots. The collision detection is incredibly generous with everything bar your bullets having nice and small hitboxes. Just run into stuff guns blazing and you’ll get through it all in no time. Line up your squid and charge.

It’s not really supposed to be about clearing the worlds and winning, it’s meant to be about shooting out a metric bucketload of bullets, letting rip with giant explosions and enjoying the light show as you go. Hopefully making someone smile along the way.

‘Course, I’d hope it can be played both ways, but you never really know :)

+1 One Screen Arena Shmup

-1 Controls (any game wherein one axis of control is overloaded with another axis of control (in this yaw and translation on the horizontal axis) has control problems in my book)

-1 Spinning Is a Good Trick (I beat the first two “worlds” whilst doing nothing but spinning. Its hard to do consistently due to the awful controls…)

+/-0 No mouse control. A must for a PC game made in the last 20 years (then again the first computer I had growing up was the original 128K Macintosh, so due to my mouse chauvinism this is merely an observation rather than a solid plus/minus).

Space Giraffe gets it right in the Shiny/Tempest Clone departments, without all of the problems this demo has. With some sort of alternate control scheme, this could be extremely satisfying. As is, it warrants a “meh, pretty, but it rips off Space Giraffe in the name, graphics, and weird departments”.

The music is simply awesome.

Is Russ Meyer in the games industry now?