Post by Studio DynoStorm in Celestial Crusaders (DEMO) comments

Viewing post in Celestial Crusaders (DEMO) comments

Thanks Knight! I really appreciate your comment and I agree with a lot of your points.

Celestial Crusaders is on hiatus. Tri-Storm Studios leader Connor Ludovice is pretty busy at the moment and we intend on doing some animation projects on his Youtube channel pretty soon and start a Patreon to get some money rolling in so that we can try Celestial Crusaders again. I also believe we'll be going for a more hires look for Celestial Crusaders in the future.

I don't believe the project has been abandoned but Connor and I have some things to sort out before we return to the project.

Boss bullet "milking" is also something that was on my mind during development, a shorter timer or a slightly altered scoring system would probably fix this issue. As for the bonus rounds I was considering an entirely new set of patterns.

With Bonus rounds I've made them pass way faster than the ordinary rounds (double speed), this is of course with the exception of the boss who has the same health but faster bullets. New patterns AND 1 hit would probably be too much. New Patterns and normal hits would be better but I think that would defeat the point of a bonus round (Although I might make an exception for the TLB). There's a certain degree of excitement from battling a super hard version of a boss one is already familiar enough with at only 1hp to get insane rewards and that's something I love about the bonus rounds in CCrusaders. Fighting a boss twice is a pretty unique and personally I stand with it, casuals won't take issue with it. Boss Timer and Half Health would probably the issues.

I'm rambling now. Anyways thanks so much!

Is there anywhere I can watch your videos of you playing the game? I'd love to watch!

I'm also currently developing a metroidvania called "Super DynoStory". If you're interested I'd be happy to give you an early preview of the near complete final game. :)

-DynoStorm

M.Knight5 years ago(+1)

Thanks for the answer! I am happy to hear the hiatus is not permanent and that there's a chance you'll resume work on it! It's not easy to make money and finance game development with shmups as they are relatively niche and pretty much a genre where the best games are made due to passion for that kind of game. It makes sense that you are using other means to raise some money before potentially getting back to this game.

I can absolutely understand the reason you would want to keep the bonus rounds as they are right now, with the same boss fought twice, and I absolutely feel tense and excited when fighting that tougher version of the boss without getting hit at all. The main concern I could have is about length. If bonus stages are shorter, that's one less issue, but having to re-do a 3-minute long final boss with much faster patterns and no right to take damage seems nerve-wracking, and maybe a bit too punishing when you aren't entirely familiar with the game's patterns yet. If all stages have the same kind of pacing as the demo stage, I don't think it is an issue, but for a last boss or a TLB, it might be somewhat different. Though as you said, with less health it could fix the problem entirely too! Well, that's something you'll test and adjust yourself during future developement.

Following your comment, I have just uploaded my current best run here :

I got hit once during a bonus round, but managed to clear the rest of the game without getting hit, so the score shouldn't be too bad.

And thanks for the Super DynoStory offer, but Metroidvanias are a genre I play a lot more casually than shmups so I know I wouldn't be able to comment on it with as much analytical depth as Celestial Crusaders, nor would I be able to invest as much time on it.

By the way, if/when the dev team resumes work on Celestial Crusaders later on, feel free to inform me!

Studio DynoStorm5 years ago(+1)

Thanks man! :)

I'll message you when more happens.

itch.io

Viewing post in Celestial Crusaders (DEMO) comments