Rainchaser demo - 348.472pts

Demo is available here : https://kornodd.itch.io/rainchaser
Played for Shmup Junkie discord caravan competition

Rainchaser is a shmup in development made by one dev (Kornodd) and one composer (ime44) from what I understand. It is inspired by ZeroRanger (with the multiple weapons you can get, as well as a strong and distinctive color scheme) while also having its own identity and world with witches and steampunk-esque flying machines.

A teaser video (    • RAINCHASER Reveal Trailer   ) was released some weeks ago and it blows away almost every single shmup (maybe even game?) trailer you can see out there easy peasy. No stupid giant obtrusive "Eleventy Bosses to fight!" or "Incredible graphics and music!" text that tells you the obvious, but an intriguing look into the game world accompanied by great music and mystique.

One could thus expect awesome things from that project and the demo confirms it. The cinematic flair and presentation are top notch, the music is cool (the Violette fight theme is a banger), and the game is overall fun to play. I feel like you likely wouldn't get all those weapons so early in the full game (but instead at the end of the stages ZR-style), but here it's as if there was a condensed version of everything to expect, which makes perfect sense for a demo.

Handling all those weapons with their alternate shot types can be a bit overwhelming at first, especially with the back shot whose focus mode changes the directions of shots (it almost feels like a different shot rather than a focus) or the swords that are risky yet don't feel necessary for survival nor as whoaaa as the ZR drill. I ended up using mostly the main shot and at times the back shots. It's still quite fun like that and I was surprised the demo stage ended up being ~8/9 minutes long. It's got so many set-pieces and tightly-paced encounters in it that it doesn't feel that lengthy at all! Some lesser devs would repeat the same basic enemies over and over until you sleep out of boredom to pad the stage length and then kill you with a euromidboss difficulty spike, but not here, heh heh heh.

The scoring is kinda whatever to be honest. I didn't care much about the ZR chaining and it's a relatively similar feeling here. DDP-style chaining is just not an exciting scoring system, and not an exciting chaining system. The archetypal safe system you see devs slap on a shmup when there is no strong core focus on a part of your toolset (like say, Psyvariar grazing). And yes, it's the Chaos Field score player bashing chaining systems, the irony is not lost on me lmaooo. I don't dislike chaining necessarily, but it has to feel more involved in a way. DDP-style chaining where it's just about basic shooting but with a specific timing is not my idea of fun compared to the mind-bending routing and resource management going on with high level Chaos Field chaining with resource-based special weapons.

Here the leniency on timing also means you can keep a chain as long as you don't die, and the multipliers go wayyy higher than in ZR. So really you just get extra punished for losing lives as the multiplier gets halved if you get hit.

There is some room for optimization in extra enemy waves, and I get some of them but not the extra towers on the dual tower midboss. I kinda struggle on consistency on this midboss, the blades often get me so I play it safe.

Speaking of playing it safe, the boss fight was also very much that. No sword-based pointblank speedkills for me. Violette's patterns aren't too bad for the most part, but the butterfly shotgun attack in your face is the run killer. These kinds of Toaplan attacks are not my cup of tea, but I managed to get a run that for once does not die to it.

Surprisingly, I thought this would propel my score a lot as it would essentially double whatever score I get out of beating the boss (if the multiplier is applied)...but somehow I only got 1k more points than a run that died on the buttefly shotgun and had virtually the same score entering the boss fight :    • Rainchaser demo   347 679pts   Kinda bizarre ??? But maybe not? Perhaps it's more about the extra enemies I miss out in the level.

Either way, I think I am satisfied with this no-death run. Looking forward to the full game!

Played on PC, recorded with OBS Studio
#shmup #STG