RF Generation Message Board

The mid-90's brought us an innovation in the shooting game genre with the advent of the danmaku, or "bullet hell" shooter. Developer Cave set the standard, and many studios and doujin developers have tried to replicate and innovate upon that over the years, with varying success. As the genre in general has seen a renaissance over the past few years, new developers have added their ideas, and tried to iterate on the formula. Some recent devs have garnered acclaim for bringing interesting new elements to the table with their entries into the shmup landscape. South Korean indie outfit Deerfarm has thrown their hat into the ring, and tried their hand at replicating that style, with Shikhondo Soul Eater.

Shikhondo Soul Eater is a Korean bullet-hell shoot ‘em up set within a beautiful and bizarre world of Asian mythology. Armies of demons known as yokai have escaped from Limbo. They are spreading like a plague across the land, sowing fear and stealing souls. You must destroy the pestilent invaders and free the captured souls from eternal torment. The game is available digitally on all modern console platforms (Switch, Xbox One/Series, PS4/5), as well as on PC via Steam, and also on iOS and Android. Physical versions for Switch and PS4 were published by Eastasiasoft, and released Exclusively through Play Asia. Join the RF Generation Shmup Club as we explore spooky yokai mythological nightmares in Shikhondo in October 2021!

Participants:
MetalFRO
Addicted
FauxMacho
BdotReality
Reticulan
Mobichan
RandomRetro (via Discord)
Corkman

Shikhondo is on sale on the Nintendo eShop right now, through October 6th, so now is a great time to pick it up, if you don't have it already!

I am in for this month. Just grabbed on sale for $4.19 on the Switch. With the days getter shorter and colder I should have plenty of time for some good runs, in between other spooky games.

Life is finally starting to let up on me some, and I plan to return to streaming in October. SO COUNT ME IN BOYS!

Excellent! Good to see you're still kicking, Bdot. I wondered if maybe things just got real hectic for you, so it's good that you'll have some time to relax a bit.

Count me in!  Looking forward to trying this game.

I'm in. I've had this one for a while (seems to go on sale on the Switch often!) but haven't given solid attention yet.

Normally I'm inclined to give a game some time, an opportunity to grow on me. But there's one issue I'd like to put out here from the get-go: lag. In particular, Switch lag. I am willing to overlook a little lag, especially on the Switch since it gives me portability, a convenient place to have A LOT of shmups, and generally good support for tate modes... present company, ahem, excluded. However, in a bullet-grazer like Shikhondo, the lag is frustrating, since I am purposefully spending time near a lot of bullets. And then letting go of focus shot and returning to normal movement can make me feel even more out of control with the lag.

I'm curious what others think about lag on Switch and particularly what controller they like to use. I like an arcade stick, and I frequently use my 8BitDo arcade stick. It is great with the PC, but with the Switch I often find that it seems to add even more lag. My favorite way to play is docked with the stick, but fairly often, as is the case with Shikhondo, I feel like it's the least responsive way to play. Any advice for a low-latency stick on the Switch?

I am playing on Switch, but don't perceive any lag.  I am using a pro controller, but would prefer if I had an arcade stick I could use on the Switch.

The game is giving me hard Shikigami no Shiro vibes, which isn't really my cup of tea.  But I managed about 507 million points from my best run so far (ended at the spider boss). I wish the music was more exciting and that there were actual stages instead of a scrolling wallpaper behind a bunch of enemy waves.  It is a professional presentation, but isn't really a game I will come back to after the community event is over.

But I am glad I got out of my comfort zone for a few weeks. ^_^'

I don't have experience with 8bitdo sticks, but both the M30 and SF30 seem to work fine on my Switch, with no lag, though those are Bluetooth. I would say check with 8bitdo and see if there's a firmware update you can do. My MayFlash F500 Elite got an update recently, and it supposedly helped with some lag/input latency on some platforms.

I'm starting to get a good handle on the game. I managed to reach stage 4 this evening on stream, and then a couple runs later, even though I died on the stage 3 boss, I managed to get a pretty good score. I don't think I quite have the timing down for the Soul Collect mode, but I'm trying to figure it out, and work out when is best to go for that second mode. Really digging the art style, though, and the music is solid.

 
  Nice job so far everyone! 

   I am playing this month. I got a late start this month but I played a fair bit this weekend. I like the art in this game but I'm not sure about the scrolling backgrounds. I don't really feel like I'm flying. I don't know why, but I like feeling like I'm flying and that I'm going fast in shmup. The art is really cool though and I do find myself admiring the art in the background instead of dodging bullets sometimes.  :P :P :P 

   I just played some tonight after work and got to 532 mil. I was going to play for survival at first but this is really a scoring game so I'll play for score. Besides, I've been into playing for score more lately between playing Assault Shell and Cotton Reboot.

  Happy soul eating everyone!  :drool: :drool: :drool:

I know what you mean about not feeling like you're flying, though in this game, it at least has some scrolling effect, particularly in stage 2. But yes, the areas are surreal enough with their sort of watercolor/sepia tone look that they feel less real, and thus less like you're flying through/above them. I get the same vibe when I watch footage of a lot of the earlier Touhou games, and even some of the more recent ones. The backgrounds serve more as a backdrop, and less as scenery to fly over, as opposed to just a black screen.

As for me, I managed to up my PB again to over 1 billion, and reached the stage 4 boss. From this point, I'm going to start using the Boss Rush mode to get more practice in against the bosses specifically. I still need to tighten my approach on stage 3's boss, and stage 4 I definitely need to learn the patterns, because it threw me for a loop right away.

I'm chipping away little by little at the game. It seems like I'm progressing to where a lot of you all are, around 500mil. Seems like that where practice and experience are needed to break through.

I'm playing on the Switch. I'm pretty disappointed in this version, besides being extremely bare bones, my high scores are not working. It won't save anything for me, and the tutorial screen before runs seems to state the wrong button for the 2nd phase of the soul collect. Anyone else experiencing the lack of high scores on Switch?

I finally got around to playing for the first time tonight. I gotta say, the game is really fun and I'm really enjoying it. Current PB on Normal mode with The Girl is Score:1078714358 Soul: 47339. Not bad for an hour of play time. Looking forward to seeing how far I can ramp this up.

Also I'm not sure what the score penalty is for bombing, but I def accidentally bombed like 3 times during that 1 billion run I had lmao. Noob mistakes boys XD

Yeah, I have a real problem with accidental bombing, because it looks like my meter is full, but I'm not absolutely waiting for the audible cue that Soul Mode is ready. Hard habit to break :slick:

New high scores for tonight! I was pretty surprised that I got my best score with Grim Reaper, since I generally think The Girl seems better. But who knows.

New High Score! Broke the 2 billion mark!

Solid progress today. Something odd going on with my Switch and this game with both the pro controller and handheld where occasionally the inputs don't register, or worse, the character randomly charges forward.  ???

I understand the game a lot better, and focusing on scoring makes the game more fun. There just isn't a lot of enemy variety otherwise, and perhaps Boss Rush would be more fun. With that, I get the rhythm it's asking me to play at. Is it that 4th boss that pretty much has you charge during the first half of a pattern dodging to the side then unleashing? There's no other way out. The publisher has a short video explaining some scoring https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hBq7ICgmZ4
Soul Collect Mode = 2x points
2nd level Soul Collect Mode = 4x points

So basically I've been grazing bullets in the levels to charge and engage the Soul meter as much as possible. I like that mechanic because I've already played Danmaku Unlimited 3 a lot.

High scores are not working on Switch, but I promise I'm playing Arcade on Normal difficulty and personal best so far is:
1,579,148,184

GG FauxMacho, and thanks for the video!

So it seems that Shikhondo - Soul Eater does not have a time out on it's bosses. Which is a huge oversight by the devs. You can basically just milk bullets and activate burst mode forever and pad your score for as long as you want to. Pretty lame imo, and I'm not gonna do that. But I thought it was something worth mentioning and bringing up in here.

I tried milking the first boss. Since you have to stop shooting to graze and fill the Soul meter get extra Soul Collect attacks, and then you only get points for the onscreen bullets converted to souls at the beginning and end of the power-up, your soul count will start draining. When my soul count went down to 0, I was only getting 10-20k per Soul Collect attack, but by losing the Soul Count my 70-90 million end stage bonus is no more. So you'll have to milk seemingly for DAYS.

Perhaps there is some scoring technique in pulsing your attack to keep your soul number up, thereby lengthening your boss fight for more Soul Collect attacks without losing the end stage bonus. The boss will take some continual damage and eventually be defeated.

I didn't try milking the bosses, but this has been my observation as well, the latter part of what you posted. To me, then, the scoring in this game isn't a very interesting loop, as it's not very flexible, and doesn't really allow you to do much to really exploit it to the fullest, aside from really low scoring bursts. Seems boring to me.

I was hoping to stream this last night, but after work, adulting took precedence, and time got away from me. Not sure if I'm going to have time the next couple days to play, as I have a lot going on. Anyone have final thoughts about the game to share?

  I was able to get a few more runs in today after not being able to play for a couple of weeks. I got to 661 mil, a little better than my previous score.

For me, I was interested in this game for the cool art and found some fun in the gameplay for the small amount of time I was able to play. It was good to get some practice in a game with grazing mechanic.

 I had some issues with the orange arrowhead looking bullets blending into the background or the souls you were collecting. Also the online leaderboards on the Switch version were glitchy. One time the scores didn't display and another time it wouldn't update my online ranking when I got a higher score.

It's a pretty average game. Not amazing but not bad either. Good at a low price.

My final thoughts about this game is that it's a very good concept, but truly just unfinished. With a revision of bug fixes, color changes and some less pixelated assets (on Switch at least) this game could really shine.

The Soul Collect mechanic is a bit deeper than it appears on the first credits. The 4th and 5th bosses mandate activations at certain points so the player better have one ready, but there is usually enough wiggle room to quickly charge up and release one. And those patterns are timed so the end-of-power-up bullet cancel saves you from the pattern once again. To my recollection there is just one spot at the beginning of the 4th boss where I need to come in with a full meter otherwise I will take a hit.

One feature we haven't mentioned that I really like is the Reward at the end of each level. Choose between Soul or Life. But what isn't explained is that if you have 3+ of the one you choose you get 1 added to your stock, but if you are down to 0 (Soul only), 1, or 2 it will bring you back to a stock of 4. What I really like about that is that you can take a few hits in early levels and not feel the need to restart. Sure scoring takes a hit because the end of level bonuses are smaller with less lives remaining, but I've been playing 1/2 for score and 1/2 for the clear.

But also, the levels are too long and boring. There just needs to be more enemy variety.

My high score so far is: 2,128,985,850 and I think I got a 2CC at some point. I'd really like to get a 1CC but the last two levels are a bit more difficult.