Work on VI is progressing nicely, nothing major really over the past few days other than trying to make sure that it all looks as smooth and as nice as possible. There’s far too many things that have been hacked in as tests and still sitting in the code that I’m currently stripping out. Chances are, it’ll still be sitting around the 15meg mark when finished, but thats a file size that I can live with – course, I’ve not added GeeKays excellent sound track to it yet…
I must confess though, I am incredibly happy with the way its turning out – and even if no other sod likes it, It’ll still be my own little toy to enjoy 🙂
With a bit of luck, a few weeks into the competition and a quick overhaul of the Bag Full Of Wrong site and I should be good to go, but y’know – I’ve been saying that for nearly six months now, so I wouldn’t hold your breath just in case.
Picked up a copy of Charlies Games Bullet Candy this morning. Charlie started this roughly the same time as I started VI and I was a bit worried that we might have been treading similar paths, but nah. He’s gone for a more traditional Llamatron come bullet hell style than myself so all is good in the world.
Its quite enjoyable and well worth the (under) ten quid I spent on it and some of the effects look excellent.
I can’t help but nitpick though, possibly because its a similar style of game to what I’m working on therefor I feel a bit closer to it than I really should. One of the complaints I received over some of the beta versions of VI towards the end of last year were that occasionally, the effects obscure the action meaning that you’re in danger of biting the bullet due to lack of visibility.
In Bullet Candy, this can become a bit of a problem towards later levels. Around 99% of the times I blew my poor little ship to pieces I had absolutely no idea what had hit me until the death was over and I could see what was remaining on screen – and whilst I had a large stock of lives, so it wasn’t too much of a problem – its certainly frustrating thinking that there was no possible way I could have avoided that.
The collision boxes felt a little too large given the amount of bullets on screen, maybe I’ve been spoilt by oodles of excellent Japanese shooters that allow you that wonderful feeling when you’ve just scraped through a near impossible situation by the skin of your teeth – but it was certainly something that felt amiss in this game.
With the larger collision boxes in Bullet Candy you absolutely must have a pretty clear run as bullet scraping is impossible – meaning that on levels where some of the nasties are pissing out bullets two the dozen (and they do piss them out at great speed) the only way to get yourself out of a tight spot is suicide. So, you better hope that you’ve stocked up on large amounts of lives beforehand or you’re fucked.
This probably sounds like I have loads of problems and issues with the game, and really – I don’t. I’m quite possibly being oversensitive about some of the problems I am finding as VI is at the forefront of my mind at the moment and all the rules I’ve set in place for how VI must turn out are spinning around my head constantly.
So, Its good, dumb fun and as mindless shooters go (my favourite type of game)- its certainly one of the better ones on the market that I’ve played (and I’ve played most of them, for my sins) and kudos to Charlie for not slipping into the dumbing the game down trap for the casual market that so many folks seem to think is sensible.
There’s a lot of love been put into Bullet Candy and it shows, so don’t let my minor quibbles put you off. It really is an excellent game worthy of your time.
I certainly played through a lot of it this afternoon with a huge grin on my face.
Go and check the demo out and see if its up your street too, its available in Mac & PC versions from Charlies Games
