Shmup Club September 2022 - Operation STEEL

[MetalFRO]

@4_T_en - I'm curious what draws you to the Cid Cobra ship? I find the Pignon to be my ship of choice, I think because I like its default weapon better, in part because of the charge. Once I have access to Arrow or Helix Later, I tend to abandon it, but it's great for taking out mid-size enemies and bosses early on, because of its power. Plus some bullets that you can destroy are easily wiped away with the charge shot.

[4_T_en]

I'll add that the caravan/time attack is great practice for the main mode. Point blanking to quickly take out bosses is the name of the game in time attack, so you get used to being in the thick of bullet patterns and living on the edge, which is the only way to kill everything in time. Plus you gotta avoid getting hit to keep your multiplier up, so each run feels like a frantic gamble. Then when you shift back to the main mode, the game suddenly feels a lot more relaxed and open. My first few runs on normal mode after a couple of days of concentrating on the caravan mode yielded my best scores so far.

[4_T_en]

@4_T_en - I'm curious what draws you to the Cid Cobra ship?

Pignon's charge shot never really clicked with me. I did a decent run with it early in my playing, but I think that once I got more comfortable with the game, I preferred the relative simplicity of Cid Cobras autofire shot. Since you have to lay off the fire to vacuum up the coins, it was simpler for me to manage shot/vacuum with Cid Cobra, instead of shot/charge/vacuum choice with Pignon. In any case, within a couple of days I was very comfortable with Cid Cobra, and figured the smaller hitbox and faster movement speed were reason enough to keep my focus there. I've played dozens of caravan runs and have never tried Pignon yet, for example.

[BB]

Hi guys, I'm the developer of the game. I finally got around to signing up here.

If anybody has any questions about the game I would be glad to answer them.

re: Ship choice - The game was designed around the Cobra ship, it's my preference but I see many people prefer the Pignon ship so I'm happy they're both viable (although probably not in Time Attack mode as 4_T_en surmised.)

re: Horn weapon - It's not just available in boss rush mode, it's in normal mode too. There is a very small chance it will spawn instead of a "regular" weapon. The horn weapon is pretty terrible though, so you're not missing out by not finding it
(Also there is a secret seed you can enter if you want to start with it...)

[BrandonGuerra97]

so last night, i secured a new PB on stream last night. had a really good run and all the pieces fell in the right places but as soon as i got to timeron, i bit the dust. Pretty proud of this run and my first time cracking 200K. only thing that kinda blows is the facecam blocking the score during the run, definitely gotta fix this before my next stream.

and here's the link to the highlight: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1591683670

[MetalFRO]

re: Horn weapon - It's not just available in boss rush mode, it's in normal mode too. There is a very small chance it will spawn instead of a "regular" weapon. The horn weapon is pretty terrible though, so you're not missing out by not finding it
(Also there is a secret seed you can enter if you want to start with it...)

Welcome to the site, BB! Also, I can confirm the horn weapon - I got it the first night I played & streamed the game, and I think it was my 1st or 2nd run.

@Brandon - you had some killer runs going on during that stream! Seems like you're really getting along well with the game, which is great to see. Great score, as well!

I managed to reach the TLB again this evening a couple times, including my last run where I upped my PB by a decent bit, but I still haven't managed to take the boss down. If I could get there with more health, I might be able to just tank my way through it, but whatever. I'll get it eventually.

[4_T_en]

I've only been playing the time attack mode recently. I really want that 200K achievement! I'm getting closer, little by little, but I think you pretty much have to have a perfect run to get it, unless there are easier scoring opportunities that I am missing... It seems that you have to quick kill all of the bosses to reap those bonuses, plus kill all enemies to get that bonus, plus no miss to keep that bonus at 100%. In my PB, I got hit once in the final seconds of my fight with Timeron, which was disappointing--but I still made it onto the online leaderboard, at least. I'm having a really good time with this mode. I like how it changes the feel of the game to me, since I think it has to played at the right edge of the screen, quick killing enemies as soon as they come on the screen (at least one of the bosses can be sealed).

[BB]

I've only been playing the time attack mode recently. I really want that 200K achievement! I'm getting closer, little by little, but I think you pretty much have to have a perfect run to get it, unless there are easier scoring opportunities that I am missing... It seems that you have to quick kill all of the bosses to reap those bonuses, plus kill all enemies to get that bonus, plus no miss to keep that bonus at 100%. In my PB, I got hit once in the final seconds of my fight with Timeron, which was disappointing--but I still made it onto the online leaderboard, at least. I'm having a really good time with this mode. I like how it changes the feel of the game to me, since I think it has to played at the right edge of the screen, quick killing enemies as soon as they come on the screen (at least one of the bosses can be sealed).

I'm glad you're enjoying the Time Attack mode
You're right on all counts - the hard part is avoiding taking damage while still killing everything quickly enough to get through in time. It sounds like your PB would have got there if you hadn't taken a hit right at the end, unfortunately.

I can provide more specific tips if you need them, but it sounds like you've got it mostly figured out anyway!

[4_T_en]

If anybody has any questions about the game I would be glad to answer them.

It's great that you are here, BB. Thanks for taking the time! One thing I am curious about is your influences, specifically in combining rogue-lite elements with shmups. That's a combo that I've always been interested in, although I realize it risks provoking negativity from a part of the shmup community--which is a little weird because plenty of genre touchstones have a bit of randomness baked in in various ways. I'm liking Operation Steel so much that I plan on digging in to other shmups with roguelite elements in the second half of the month. I'm going to revisit Steredenn, which I've had for years on the 360 although it never really clicked with me. I'll probably also give Broodstar a go, after checking out the demo and thinking it had promise. I'm curious if you or others have recommendations.

[4_T_en]

I also wanted to alert our group here that a new update was released yesterday:

v1.4.0
Changelog:

I've upgraded the engine to the latest version of Godot, hopefully some performance improvements might come through. If you see any weird new bugs that might have been caused by the update then please report them on Discord or the discussion board
Slightly reduced later boss health (level 4 onwards)
Slightly reduced miniboss health
Slightly increased Dash and Flash item cooldowns
Attempted to soften the coin SFX a touch

[BB]

If anybody has any questions about the game I would be glad to answer them.

It's great that you are here, BB. Thanks for taking the time! One thing I am curious about is your influences, specifically in combining rogue-lite elements with shmups. That's a combo that I've always been interested in, although I realize it risks provoking negativity from a part of the shmup community--which is a little weird because plenty of genre touchstones have a bit of randomness baked in in various ways. I'm liking Operation Steel so much that I plan on digging in to other shmups with roguelite elements in the second half of the month. I'm going to revisit Steredenn, which I've had for years on the 360 although it never really clicked with me. I'll probably also give Broodstar a go, after checking out the demo and thinking it had promise. I'm curious if you or others have recommendations.

I'm sure this will be touched on in next month's podcast, but the short version is that I liked both genres and Steredenn was the first I found to combine them. That game is fun but I felt like there were a few things that bothered me, such as very samey enemy design and many weapons/upgrades not feeling particularly strong (using drones seemed like it was always the predominant strategy for me at least.)

My favourite roguelike/lite shmup is Project Starship X. Broodstar is also fun in a "try to break the game with synergy" kinda way. There are quite a few more games out there I could name but nothing I have felt compelled to play for long periods of time.

[MetalFRO]

I haven't heard of Broodstar, so I'll have to look into that. But Project Starship X is awesome, and lots of fun. We really enjoyed playing through that a few months ago. And while I didn't clear the game during the month, I managed to finally get that 4th loop clear just after, and that was pretty sweet.

Regarding the update, I'll have to make sure I check for the update on Steam. I definitely want to see what difference it makes for the later bosses, and whether or not it gives me an edge to finally beat the game.

[4_T_en]

I think I may be convinced to check out Project Starship X, or at least put it on a wishlist and give it some consideration. I'm Lovecraft fan going back decades to my pre-teen years, and a fairly humorless one at that (at least where Lovecraft is concerned), so I tend to avoid the corners of online popular culture that embrace a cutesy Lovecraftianism. And as such, I have consciously avoided this game. But if it's a good roguelite shmup, perhaps I should overlook this aspect of its presentation.

[BB]

I think I may be convinced to check out Project Starship X, or at least put it on a wishlist and give it some consideration. I'm Lovecraft fan going back decades to my pre-teen years, and a fairly humorless one at that (at least where Lovecraft is concerned), so I tend to avoid the corners of online popular culture that embrace a cutesy Lovecraftianism. And as such, I have consciously avoided this game. But if it's a good roguelite shmup, perhaps I should overlook this aspect of its presentation.

There's a free demo which shows a good portion of the game if you're on the fence. There is some cutesy Kthulhu stuff which I could give or take, but there is also serious stuff as well which is pretty cool.

[MetalFRO]

Yes, it's a really well done game in general, so if you're willing/able to overlook the ridiculous factor, it's definitely worth investing time into the game.

Back to Operation STEEL, I have found Hard Mode to be less hard than I imagined, but certainly no pushover. It's interesting that the rank system seems to work about the same, but starting at a higher level, and when you take hits, you're ranked down. I like it, though, and I think it makes it more approachable than it would be if it was just uber-rank all the time.