Kumiho by Christina Antoinette Neofotistou
Our ship is called the Kumiho, or nine-tailed fox in Korean. It has the spirit of a spirit-fox inside her.
She will need to use her special telekinetic ability to the max, to make it out alive through this beautiful, once peaceful world, with enemies inspired by out of proportion animals and Korean mythology.
The story is that Mako the Progenitress Goddess has, out of anger, transformed the world into a speck of dirt. All creatures became half-organic half-metal entities, and only one Kumiho decided to battle against Mako's will, to save nature, becoming a ship herself. An evil 9-tail-fox spirit, the unlikely savior of the planet.
The way it ties in with the theme "Tiny World" is that the enemies are transformed wasps and bumblebees, and a flying squid. The Kumiho is a tiny ship.
Play with
Arrow keys > movement
Z > fire weapons
X > teleport a short distance towards the direction you are pressing OR
if you're not pressing any cursor keys, you're given the choice of 4 directions to teleport to. It's easier than it sounds.
A real test of what you can do in 3 days, with true pixelart graphics (only 21 colors used).
Loosely inspired by Korean mythology, this bullet-hell shmup was lovingly crafted by
Fedor Jutte ( did amazing coding and awesome level design )
and
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou ( made the graphics, animation and composed/performed the music )
We used Unity, Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Fruity Loops
You can learn more about the art development here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/04/29/assets-and-timelapse/
She will need to use her special telekinetic ability to the max, to make it out alive through this beautiful, once peaceful world, with enemies inspired by out of proportion animals and Korean mythology.
The story is that Mako the Progenitress Goddess has, out of anger, transformed the world into a speck of dirt. All creatures became half-organic half-metal entities, and only one Kumiho decided to battle against Mako's will, to save nature, becoming a ship herself. An evil 9-tail-fox spirit, the unlikely savior of the planet.
The way it ties in with the theme "Tiny World" is that the enemies are transformed wasps and bumblebees, and a flying squid. The Kumiho is a tiny ship.
Play with
Arrow keys > movement
Z > fire weapons
X > teleport a short distance towards the direction you are pressing OR
if you're not pressing any cursor keys, you're given the choice of 4 directions to teleport to. It's easier than it sounds.
A real test of what you can do in 3 days, with true pixelart graphics (only 21 colors used).
Loosely inspired by Korean mythology, this bullet-hell shmup was lovingly crafted by
Fedor Jutte ( did amazing coding and awesome level design )
and
Christina Antoinette Neofotistou ( made the graphics, animation and composed/performed the music )
We used Unity, Adobe Photoshop CS5 and Fruity Loops
You can learn more about the art development here:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/04/29/assets-and-timelapse/
| Play it in Unity (Web) | http://www.botogames.com/ludum/site.html |
| Read more about development | http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2012/04/29/assets-and-timelapse/ |
| Original URL | https://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-23/?action=preview&uid=13139 |
Ratings
| Coolness | 100% | 1 |
| Overall(Jam) | 3.96 | 14 |
| Audio(Jam) | 3.88 | 21 |
| Fun(Jam) | 3.98 | 5 |
| Graphics(Jam) | 4.41 | 16 |
| Humor(Jam) | 1.91 | 179 |
| Innovation(Jam) | 3.07 | 111 |
| Mood(Jam) | 3.46 | 40 |
| Theme(Jam) | 1.77 | 249 |
the only thing I could criticize is the fact that you used the z+c keys which aren't in this particular formation on many keyboard layouts. using x+c or (z or y)+x would be better
I had some trouble timing my teleports exactly, it was not uncommon to teleport directly into a bullet. I would have preferred to be able to hold down X, which displays a "ghost" at the point I will teleport to, and then RELEASE it to teleport.
Awesome job!
I felt so frustrated when after the 3rd level I was brought back to the title screen !
The dashing idea is really nice, the style is awesome (the enemies gets blue when they are hit... but in very polished way. I love how much attention you put into this detail).
I would definitely pay for a longer version.
Thanks for the postmortem which is also very interesting for the technical details. Is there any place where we can follow some more of your stuff ? Games or anything !
The audio is probably the "weak link" here. Although the music is awesome, there's not enough of it and it skips around a bit and repeats in an unnatural way. The audio effects themselves also seem to have little clicks and pops, although the choice of sounds overall is pleasing.
Ultimately, I found it a little too hard and frustrating to complete. Level 3 had me restarting all the time. Prior to that, I found the boss too hard and everything leading to it to be too easy. This may restarting really annoying. Allowing for some extra hits before you respawn and respawning at the boss battles would make this entry even more awesome.
Final note: For whatever reason, I wasn't able to actually play the game until I copied the link and added a "www." in front of it.
Music is super pro too. Cant believe the same person had the time to do all art and musics in that little time!
No links with the theme :(
I think that the enemy missiles could be prettier, and that your ship could have a shield or more health so it doesn't die the moment it collides with any bomb.
The channel could be wider.
There is just no obvious reason not to hold down the fire button at all times. Perhaps that's intentional.
But I really liked the pastel colouring, and the music fitted really well, and the firing sound was not too, and it has checkpoints.
The difficulty is a bit much for me, though. I can't seem to make it past the 3rd stage tonight. That probably means you're doing it right, though.
I don't think it really fits the theme though. And the music needed to loop a bit better.
Do a gamethrought for thoose ho can't defeat the boss ( I did :< ).
Nice job overall ;)
Remindes-me a lot of that dreamcast game Ikaruga.
Anyway amazing job.
Nice music & Art, and a really nice gameplay touch in the form of the teleporting.
A little complain of mine being the controls, not really suited for an azerty keyboard, but not really a big deal anyway.
Great job!
I like this kind of game.
The teleport mechanic is really clever, though sometimes a little difficult to tell if its going to land you on a bullet.
Nine tails? Kyuubi! ^^
It's time to improve myself in this genre, thanks for the chance :)
Great job with the pixel art too. Yeah, kind of loose tie-in with the theme, but it's alright. Great artistic design post too, and you seemed to have a pretty cohesive aesthetic sense going throughout.
I love the teleport mechanic and how your level design forces me to discover it and then learn to use it like it's second nature.
Dang this was hard.
The graphical style is nice. I enjoyed your writeup about how you achieved it as well.
Excellent work!
Pretty fun, somewhat neat mechanic.
Stellar graphics and great music though.
I liked the teleport feature :D
You guys rock!
Didn'tlike it using the Z-key. Many international keyboard-layouts place this one differently, thus causing painful hand-distortions.
There are enemies that shoot a continuous stream of projectiles. When first introduced, they are flying away from you at an angle, so I thought they were "crashing" and was thus irritated when I died by the smoke 3 times after that.
But, sorry, I think it doesn't fits the theme...
However, 5 stars for the whole rest!
excellent graphics and animations! I will also be returning to beat this.
The only, only little thing that I have to comment on: the music looped weirdly, it's more like it suddenly stopped and restarted every time. I thought that was a weird thing for a game so incredibly polished otherwise.
Great job. Any plans to improve/expand on it?
Not only is this both visually and aurally astonishingly beautiful but you've introduced a game mechanic that, as far as I know, is completely unique, clever, easily understood and very well-suited to the genre. Kudos!
A couple of slight misfeatures suggest to me that you didn't quite get everything you wanted into this game, but the attention to detail in other areas more than makes up for it. I particularly love the little flashes of blue introduced to the enemy graphics when you score a hit, and the delightful subtle animation on the title screen.
Some very small things that seemed to be missing or wrong to me:
* There's no sound or animation when the player gets hit.
* I wasn't sure if the lack of a scoring system was a deliberate design choice or just for lack of time. It seems to me a lost opportunity, it would be possible to come up with some interesting scoring mechanics involving the teleportation.
* I would be inclined to pass the whole palette through a filter increasing the contrast slightly, and maybe slightly increasing saturation for hues at the redder end of the spectrum.
* The smaller enemies could do with a couple of frames of animation to make them less static, and similarly the player ship could do with a couple of extra frames of animation to make the tilting smoother. (In general though the use of animation in this game is impressively complete and beautiful for a 72 hour game).
* When the boss returns, components that have already been destroyed are briefly displayed.
* You could do with a sound effect when teleporting, and a more specific visual effect.
* The sound effects seem to be slightly mistimed, possibly due to MP3 delay.
* I also find the connection to the theme a bit tenuous, but I'm not really in a position to complain too much on that point given that my game doesn't have much to do with the theme either :).
These are all nitpicks though, I love it. It sounds like you exhausted yourself to make it but I can assure you it was worth it. I won't be exaggerating to say it brought a little tear to my eye. :)
Sometimes a bit hard.
A also loved the boss! (and its last pattern was nice and fun!)
A short death animation would have been nice, but this is already a very very impressive game, and quite innovative for a bullet-hell.
And game is fun. I had some trouble with teleport mechanics, was hard to predict, if I will teleport to safety or not. Maybe some kind of indication where you will go when you press direction key would help.
As for the feedback, I think there should be an indication for when enemies spawn from the bottom so the player won't be exactly at the wrong spot when they do.
Also, I disliked having to release the attack key and press it again every time I died.
May I add, the boss fight pattern was awesome too! Made good use of the teleportation abality. I loved the graphics and the music too. I'd definitely want to see more of that! Congratulations on your game!
On the other hand, for making the only shmup that never once made me want to rage quit, I salute you.
That aside, nice presentation, music, controls, etc., and the teleport mechanic is something I haven't seen before. Nice job.
The only real frustration I ran into was repeatedly being killed after having defeated the final boss, which was also a much more difficult fight than any of the preceding ones.
Still, for its cleverness, simplicity, polish and clarity of vision, this is my favorite entry yet!
Music was great. Loved the translated messages popping up. Asymmetrical visual theme was boss. The "get 'em next time tiger" boss was a great nod to the classics. Loved the game to bits right up to here.
Difficulty scaling after the first boss was too abrupt. You need to master the "spirit jump" to handle that level, and I just wasn't getting it right. Maybe show four ghosts where I could rematerialize?
I would love to have played longer, but the second level was just too frustrating.
Hey, what about the theme? The play area was small, but really, I didn't see you address it except in that meta fashion. I wish I didn't have to penalize you here.
Okay, after that criticism, I'd consider this one of the best entries in the compo, and I'd say your 40 hours awake were well spent. Congratulations. Now go sell this.
Don't get me wrong - the game's beautiful, and I love shmups but I wish there was at least something to prevent hits for a small amount of time, more hits allowed, or controls that do not ever lag, even when pushing all available keys.
Overall, this isn't that much innovative and doesn't feel connected to the theme, but is great in every other way.
But it doesn't fit the theme, does it?
I have to say I really love the blink mechanic- I have never seen anything like it in a bullet hell (which doesn't say much since I don't play a ton of them) and I think it adds a lot to the gameplay. I managed not to die until the third wave, but I could beat the whole thing after a few tries!
I also love the petal animation on the title screen, I thought that was a nice touch. Really amazing production in the tight time limit.
Overall a really polished game. I'm amazed you managed to do it in such a short span of time! With no sleep nonetheless!
Could have done with a better tie-in to the theme, but the game was amazing anyway.
Even with the checkpoints the game is still damn hard xD I only managed to beat two bosses and I gave up...
The graphics were great, and I really liked the checkpoint title cards. I do think you should've had an end-game screen, rather than just kicking back to the main menu.
Nice work!
The graphics were great, and I really liked the checkpoint title cards. I do think you should've had an end-game screen, rather than just kicking back to the main menu. Same for death; I would've liked just a touch more ceremony before restarting the level.
Nice work!