General Reflections

This project had two goals in general. Goal one was to create a custom mechanic within danmokou while goal two was to learn how lasers work. People who noticed that the game was pretty light on story, dialogue, and themes are absolutely correct.

 The magnetism mechanic actually isn’t original, its actually inspired by the tagging system used in Azure Striker Gunvolt. However, the acts of tagging and electricity are split across two different characters instead. With Sakuya doing the tagging and Tojiko acting as the big damage in the electricity. However, the mechanic is original in a shooting danmaku game and I wanted to see if it would still be an engaging mechanic in a different genre.

Challenges

 One of the challenges I noticed early on was that the magnetism mechanic was a big limiting factor on what kind of patterns I could do. I could not have dense micro dodging patterns with a lot of density because that would cause the player to not be able to track where the boss is and how much their meter is filled. I also could not do patterns with a lot of movement because trying to switch could cause the player to mess up their movement while dodging. To address this I opted for patterns that had a lot of pauses or gaps in them. Non spells start off shooting rapidly but they actually end for a moment before starting again. That moment of pause is meant for the player time to be able to orient themselves with what value the magnetize meter is at and where the boss is. Another trick I tried using was having Yuuka move to a different part of the screen every time she would start firing. Since she would move it would force the player to look for them visually and give them a chance to look at the magnetize meter.

This project was also a big excuse to learn the laser tutorial for Danmokou, which is why Yuuka is the main villain. In retrospect, limiting myself to just lasers was probably a misstep because laser design have their own limitations which combined with the limits I was already abiding with the magnetize mechanic made the amount of patterns I could do even more restrictive. However, with these two game mechanics I decided that the game would be more about lasers blocking off specific areas moving into safer areas to be able to apply magnetism and dodge about with homing lightning.

Another challenge I noticed towards the end of development was that the game was too easy. When I was first testing the patterns out in the beginning I actually thought the game was too hard because the act of having to switch characters midway during a pattern and having to track the gauge was something new to me as well while testing. However, as I was practicing more while testing the game I realized that after getting used to the mechanic the game was too easy, but I was getting too close to the deadline to able to change it. Not only that, but I remembered that I had a harder time at first playing the game which might make people playing the game for the first time think the game was unfair if I decided to ramp up the difficulty. So I decided that I’d make the game as it was, leaning more on the easier side.  

 Things on the cutting floor

Sakuya and Tojiko were supposed to have more differences as playable units. Sakuya was intended to have faster movement and access to the time slow mechanic solely. Tojiko would have had slower movements, a bigger hurtbox, and an ability that was different from the time slow mechanic. The idea was to have Sakuya be the more agile unit while Tojiko was more of a power house. However, I didn’t have time to be able to do this so I decided to allow them to be more unified in ability.

I wanted to have two Yuukas on screen for some patterns to be like her boss fight in LLS stage 6. Danmokou does have the ability to put multiple bosses on the screen, but I ran out of time to properly figure it out.

There was supposed to be a playable tutorial so that players could come to terms with the magnetize mechanic outside of the main game. This was supposed to give me more space to actually have more of a story in the main game. However, because I could not do a tutorial I was forced to explain in the introduction of the game.

The magnetize mechanic was supposed to be called Blade Fixing. The meter was supposed to be called the Blade Fix meter. Having lightning home in was supposed to be called Lightning Blade Fixing. However, since I didn’t have a tutorial and I had to teach people how to play the game through dialogue, magnetize as a word made more sense.

I tried pulling together a better story, but trying to write for Danmokou’s visual novel engine was a lot more challenging for me than expected so I decided to not spend too much time on it as I was running out of time. Maybe some day I’ll learn how to write for it better.

 Spells I personally like

 I really like Falling Petals within Light mechanically and the last spell Rending Heaven and the Scarlet Sky visually. Falling Petals within Light is simple and static, but still manages to be visually complex and tricky. Rending Heaven and the Scarlet Sky just looked really cool and the building of falling light from different angles makes it seem like beautiful destruction. You can probably tell I like the rapid fire multi colored lasers a lot. When I learned how to do it I thought it was the coolest thing ever so I went ham with it more than I liked to admit.

 Spells I wish I did better

 I really wanted to do more with the survival time out. This was really the last spell I added to the game before deadline and I wish I could have been able to expand on it just a bit more. Simple lasers to corner a rat was also one spell that I thought was hard when I was first testing but turned out to be too easy when I got more used to the game.  

 The Non Spells in general

 All of the non spells are based loosely on Yuuka’s patterns seen in LLS stage 5 and 6. There were a couple I couldn’t replicate in time which was why there are some repeats in there.

Wrapping up

It makes me really happy that people enjoyed the mechanic. It made the goal of making a custom system within danmokou a complete success. The challenge of the game overall felt less engaging than Yukari’s WIP did, but creating patterns that worked with the system I was able to make was a great personal accomplishment. I’m just happy that people enjoyed the game.