Varia
Posted by Derek Yu Wed, 03 Oct 2007 20:23:00 GMT
Gad, I feel like so much good stuff has passed across my proverbial desk recently. It’s hard to believe there was a time when I had to play a bunch of, well, “terrible” games to fill the site’s front page. You can, of course, relive my pain through Ye Olde TIGSource, an archive of older posts painstakingly compiled by ithamore features page.
But anyhoo, Varia is the game of the moment: a shoot ‘em up created for the SHMUP-DEV 2007 competition (you may recall Prototype 2 from a few days ago). At its core, Varia is a straightforward vertical shooter that mixes mechanics from classic games of the genre. However, it does so with great aplomb, in this author’s opinion, and consequently, it’s a fun ride.
From Gradius V, Varia has taken options, which can be “frozen” in place. A unique addition to this is the ability to absorb enemy shot types into your options. You can have a maximum of four trailing.
From the classic indie shooter Cho Ren Sha 68k, developer Kairos lifted the spinning power-up wheel, which lets you pick between firepower, options, or shield. Just like in Cho Ren Sha, savvy players can snag all three by sitting in the middle of the wheel!
The most underdeveloped aspect of the game is perhaps the chain combo system, taken from Ikaruga, although from looking at Tim W.’s massive “high score” (testicles), there might be more to it than I’m giving credit for… in any case, it just adds a little more to this great little shooter.
(Thanks, Melly!)
We're drawing robots in the forums. 
It’s the game of the moment? I already beat it :(
It’s the game of MY moment. ;)
My proverbial desk is bigger than yours.
It’s also got a gremlin. A proverbial gremlin.
I’ve got a blender, but it’s a real one though,… just in case. ;-)
I thought sitting in the middle of the option wheel chose one at random in Cho Ren Sha, does it really give you all three?
Sure it does - when executed properly.
My feelings in one sentence: Varia is the most entertaining freeware shmup since guxt.
Varia is really up there in the fun department, yes, but like I said in Indygamer, probably because of the competition deadlines the game failed to be properly developed in what it tried to do. The powerup system works, but then again it’s taken from another game, and in here it’s not that hard to get all three powerups most of the time, unlike ChoRenSha. The game’s color chaining just… feels out of place and like it doesn’t need to be there at all. The element I felt needed to be developed more is the option thing. It’s the only more unique element of the game, but I don’t have any incentive in getting any of the fancier weapons. The average bullets got me through all three difficulties just fine (it’s also a bit easy by shooter standards). Hopefully it’ll be better developed after the competition is over.
The freezing of the options is really interesting. One thing I figured out is that if you freeze the options in front of your ship and hold down “C” you’ve got a makeshift shield. I think that’s really cool. I agree the absorption is fairly useless otherwise, but that’s pretty cool, don’t you think?
Also, I have trouble getting all three power-ups all the time. And the ones I get are not so easy.
Shield, eh? That’s a neat strategy to try. It’s probably why some shots can’t be absorbed, especially in bosses.
Thanks for the mention, Derek.
@ Melly: Maybe I’ll get to work on it after the results, maybe not. I’m be blasted by schoolwork, so I’m really not sure. I’m also very sick of working on the game… I thought was supposed to be a final product :P
I thought the absorption was something fun because you could get stuff like charge shot and other stuff. The weapons are fun to play with, though many people seem to like one thing or another.
hell yeah, 8th place at top 20 :P