What Phantasmal is all about

Ok, so in the last post I briefly described phantasmal as a ‘SHMUPRPG’  and that leaves a really wide range of possibilities of what it could be, so I’ll get down to how the game will actually work (though if it sucks I’ll change it of course 🙂 )

The RPG part:

_{Underwater cities are always cool}

The first and easiest part to explain is the RPG part, in phantasmal like many RPGs you will be given a pretty big fantasy world to run around, and there will be a fairly hefty story to go with it. in fact the story in phantasmal is just as important as the rest of the game to me (if not more so).

To get around you will mostly be on foot, running and jumping your way through forests, mountains, underwater cities and your standard RPG fare. sorry but no airships planned as yet =p

I also want to point out there will be no leveling up, and no grindingfor experiance. Its not that I dont think they always make for bad gameplay, I just dont think they fit phantasmal, I’ll totally make a mini-grindfest game at some point but this wont be it.

The SHMUP part:

_{heres a screeny shortly after coding in basic bullet patterns}

Now to explain the SHMUP part, the main character will actually do no shooting at all.  “what the heck, its not a shmup then!” I hear you scream down the internets, but you would be wrong!

You see in the majority of SHMUPs shooting is done by pressing a button at the start of the game and letting go of it when you win or when you die, the real fun actually comes from bullet dodging, and if you like shmups you will iknow I’m right.

nothing can make you feel more like a ninja than weaving through hundreds of fiery balls of death without getting singed, and its this aspect of shmups I want to bring to combat in Phantasmal.

So How does it fit?

Well instead of shooting enemies, you will have to beat them up, but you need to stun them to stop their attacks first, and thats something I’ll be going into more detail in another post, because otherwise this wall of text will be insanely huge and I want to make a little storyboard or something to demonstrate it too 🙂

Do you guys have any reservations about me mixing the two genres like this? are you pissed I’m not letting the player shoot anything? was this update just waffle or do you feel like you have a better idea of what the game is about now?

A Phantasmal Announcemant

So I figure its about time I let you guys know whats been taking up my time of late, and why I havent been doing any work on Edward recently, and this is it:

Ok, so it wont look like a gay chessboard when its done hopefully, but the foundations for the game are coming along nicely.

‘what is the game about’ I pretend I hear you ask. well its a SHMUPRPG, if you can imagine a cross between a bullet hell shooter and a final fantasy game, thats pretty much what I’m going for.

I’ll be making handy posts about how development is going and hand out any wisdom nuggets I find out along the way a-la the great wolfire who are really the inspiration for me actually sharing what I’m doing for once instead of working in absolute secrecy all the time.

anyhoo, I’ve uploaded a couple of development shots to my gallery and  I’ll be uploading some video to show how things are going soon.

I’ll be going over the game in much more detail later but for now is there anything you guys want to know about the game or how I’m making it?