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Alter

Zenohell - Steam Achievements!

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So the reason i've been basically on Doom Mapping Retirement since Soulcrusher came out (outside of mapping for TNT2/Stomper), is because i've been spending time developing games, with a freeware title out of the way, I decided to take it more seriously and make... a commercial indie title.

After months of hard work and more months to come, I present you, Zenohell, it's a shoot-em'up (shmup) inspired by 90s arcade offerings.

Aaaaaaaand the game is out! After a year of work it's finally out! Well now, you can now purchase it on:

Steam (20% launch discount going on currently for a week): http://store.steampowered.com/app/402030/
Itch.io (DRM free): http://jackdarx.itch.io/zenohell

It will feature:

- 6 Stages filled to brim with bosses and medal collecting action!
- 3 Ships offering completely different playstyles!
- Unlockables!
- A simple scoring system that needs no strategy guides and is all about risk/reward.
- A multi-genre soundtrack composed by Jörgen Sjölander (https://soundcloud.com/dj_emphatic)

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Looks like a pretty darn good shmup. The colors are a bit hard on my eyes, but overall you've done a nice job here :) I'm curious to see more.

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It looks amazing. I'd play it and love it. As for price, the trick is to put the price at more than a person would pay for it. Depending on the length, I'd say $10 so go for $15 since everyone likes to take a cut.

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I like it, especially how some of the enemy ships (mainly boss ones) aim at you, act fast and otherwise seem threatening by their behaviour, so that the game is not just about finding safe spots on the screen. The music complements the game more than well.

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This looks solid... Although being the usual piss in your cornflakes' kind of guy, I have to wonder what should make me or anyone else want to play this instead of any other shmup with similar gameplay, many of which are free.

There was a topic on the Unity3D forums the other day with people pondering about the (relative, commercial) death of the shmup genre. One guy put forward the idea shmups had a hard time having a distinctive personality and connecting with the player, because it's all ships and space and nothing looks more like a ship than another ship.

I thought it was an interesting take, because if you talk about shmups today the name that inevitably pops up is Touhou; and the dev sidestepped the inability to relate to characters by turning every ship into a magical girl. Aside from that, not much is different from every other shmup out there (the music is nice, but plenty of shmups have nice music).

That is to say, it feels as if shmups in general are gameplay perfected. So it's hard to make meaningful strides on that front. Either you risk messing up with the formula, or you bring nothing new. Regularly we see shmups trying to mix it up and innovate with new features, but they seem to fade into obscurity as soon as they're released.

On the other hand you have Touhou; popular, tons of derivative works, passionate fans. Makes you think.

...I guess idle musings don't make for the most supportive reply if you're that far in development, sorry. People like their 90s nostalgia, and your game does everything you'd expect from a shmup right, so there has to be a market for it. Grats on getting your work out there and good luck with the release.

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Are shmups mostly limited to top down airplane games? It seems whenever I look up shootemup or bullet hell, those type games inevitably pop up first.

For the longest time whenever someone said shootemup I would think of contra or megaman. I never really enjoyed those airplane games for the same reason I don't use the plasma gun very often in doom. The attacks are so noisy you can barely see through them and their so wild that aiming is mostly unnecessary.

I've always wanted a free side scrolling contra remake but I've never seen one. Is contra basically a poor mans shootemup?

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Well that breaks my heart hearing how SHMUPs are dead. I have a vested interest in them. Jamestown has sold 600,000 copies. RefleX has sold 50,000 on Steam.

If they all churn out the same game then nothing will catch on.

I think SHMUPs are something outside of English speaking countries. As for people hating sound effects, a lot of SHMUPs now have no firing sound or its almost silent.

SHMUP is just a genre (Shoot'Em Up), there's vertical and horizontal like Gradius. Contra falls into a run'n Gun which is a form of a horizontal SHMUP. If you can program one, you can easily program the other. Only difference is gravity.

I guess there are top down run'n guns like Commando that might count as SHMUPs, but they feel so slow.

A lot of what makes SHMUPs great is the music and pretty colors. You rarely see an unpretty SHMUP.

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Well that brakes my heart hearing how SHMUPs are dead. I have a vested interest in them. Jamestown has sold 600,000 copies. RefleX has sold 50,000 on Steam.


No doubt the death of any genre is overstated, hence why I wanted to add the "relative" qualifier. In context people compare it to AAAs or mobile games pulling in dozens of millions, so even hundreds of thousands is negligible... Even though these might be financial successes.

It's mostly a question of perception, and it seems interesting to think about what makes certain games stick with people, while others are consumed and discarded.

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I also think if the genre is dying, its dying because its inaccessible for the most part. Like they keep getting harder and harder, because the fans are just used to it... so there's no way to bring in new people. Jamestown is accessible with several difficulties.

Another qualifier is its a Unity forum. Unity has a difficult time getting people to pay for things. There are of course exceptions to every rule. Of course anything with an accessible, free game maker will always have a lot of high quality free games and garbage free games.

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Phml said:

Regularly we see shmups trying to mix it up and innovate with new features, but they seem to fade into obscurity as soon as they're released.

Can you name/link some? Preferably free ones.

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Everything fades into obscurity after a month unless its a big open world. I'm surprised ShovelKnight doesn't have fantastic sales figures for all the hype it gets. Hotline Miami 2 sold better in its first month than six months of Shovel Knight.

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Frankly, i'm gonna share an opinion as a shmup developer, it will sound bad and harsh and all that.

But i'll put it this way, you don't try to be different, you don't try to reinvent the wheel in this genre, you just take things you like most and put your own twist on them, that's how the genre's rolling (it's an underground genre at this point but it's lively).

Even on mobiles, despite microtransactions, the principle's the same.

Everyone who tried something new or different (Sine Mora, Project Root and some others in recent memory) because they failed the basics 101 of gameplay design (Bugs, balance issues everywhere, never listening to feedback ESPECIALLY in Sine Mora's case, they showed up in an arcade forum to listen to feedback and they never did then they dissapeared, pardon my french but fuck those guys for that).

And the more "successful" entrants who did good at being different (Hellsinker, Akashicverse) are pretty obscure BUT they were never meant for the wider audience.

I tried last year with my previous game (Zenodyne, which was freeware you can find it on steam greenlight concepts and gamejolt) to be different a bit by making something more oldschool in the principle but ultimately the game never got much attention. With Zenohell, i'm more conventional and no surprise, I get more feedback, more public interest and other things. Not to say this is not an individual project, it is and it is my own design.

Also making a good contra/commando-style game is far harder than your usual shmup, because everything's harder to get right, it's not a programming matter so much. But the gameplay and everything, that's a rant best for it's own post.

So in the end, i'm just doing what I feel is right and I won't ask too much money (I'm aiming for 4 USD if possible with the distributions) in order to be fair and competitive when it is out, think of it as a small donation fee.

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scifista42 said:

Can you name/link some? Preferably free ones.


Can't recall any, sorry. I'm positive I played about a dozen over the last couple years, which I either got in Humble bundles and the like, tried as Steam demos or free games, or by googling "shmup freeware". You might have some luck going that route. That is, as to how to distinguish the innovative ones specifically, any significant gameplay twist is inevitably mentioned in the description.

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joe-ilya said:

Maybe rename this to "infernohell"?


wetrain

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joe-ilya said:

Maybe rename this to "infernohell"?

Why would he do it? "Infernohell" sounds terrible, honestly.

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How long did it take to design / draw each sprite? Excluding the bosses which had to take longer.

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geo said:

How long did it take to design / draw each sprite? Excluding the bosses which had to take longer.

Early in development sprite used to take between a day to a week, small sprites, because of my lack of skills. Eventually the process became much faster, to the point that I often hit an artistic burnout first than have difficulty drawings things. In future titles, if I have a budget, i'll definitely hire an artist to do backgrounds (so I can do non-repetitive backgrounds) for me, the actual sprite work I can handle myself.

So I would say making a small sprite nowadays takes me between 10 to 30 minutes depending on the idea and complexity.

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alterworldruler said:

But i'll put it this way, you don't try to be different, you don't try to reinvent the wheel in this genre, you just take things you like most and put your own twist on them, that's how the genre's rolling (it's an underground genre at this point but it's lively).


That sounds a lot like the philosophy for most Doom mapping. Especially since the target audience is kinda small, you want them to see the game and know what they're getting, and familiarity will sell in that regard.

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sgtcrispy said:

Are you using Gamemaker, because that ship select screams G.M.O.S.S.E.?

]

Uh I think you might be onto something :-( A game is a game though.

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sgtcrispy said:

Are you using Gamemaker, because that ship select screams G.M.O.S.S.E.?

I'm using GM8 Pro and yes, it is based off GMOSSE but before you write me off, i'm working with the guy behind GMOSSE because this is essentially our first real game made from it (because we had enough of nobody actually using it properly), he's been a great help in inventing certain features (not shown on this video) that would take me weeks to come up with. So yes, IT IS A GAME OF IT'S OWN, GMOSSE is just an engine base for it.

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Bad news, the game was denied from GOG, basically the reason is that they find the game too niche and it's not high budget enough so they believe their customers will not be satisfied with the product. Normally I would be okay with something like this, but then there's a certain other game on that service which I will not mention that is more hardcore than mine. So go figure, if you have money, you'll get in there.

Good news is, this doesn't mean the release is in danger, itch.io release is 100% guaranteed and setup incase for the launch. I may submit the game to playism and the humble store, however i'll wait until the game's 100% complete.

So I have to apologize that the game won't be out on GOG but, things happen.

As a reward for reading this, have some arcade cabinet gameplay from my music composer! (has some bugs)

part 1
part 2

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Archi said:

There's also Humble Store, you should try it too.

I looked into it, they require a complete game, so imma hold off till it's out and fixed on itch.io at least :). Other options include Desura and playism. Thanks for suggesting it anyway.

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I've heard from a few developer friends that Humble is becoming the #2 seller.

As for GOG and too niche, honestly while the game isn't an "Old Game" they should maintain that. Also there's Desura. That's where Five Nights and Project Zomboid took off. Desura seems to accept everything and its users are very foreign for whatever reason.

If the game gets traction it'll be on GOG. According to a Gamesutra article it takes 6,000 upvotes to break into the top 100 on Greenlight, but I've got developer friends that say Steam just allows games to be on after a certain amount of time. Not every game, but 2 of my friends were surprised that there game was dead in terms of votes for months and poof it just happened.

Its pretty awesome seeing it working on a real cabinet even if its at a bit of a distance.

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Phml said:

This looks solid... Although being the usual piss in your cornflakes' kind of guy, I have to wonder what should make me or anyone else want to play this instead of any other shmup with similar gameplay, many of which are free.


I think its more than shmups. The indie bubble hath popped with few exceptions. I rarely seen any indie development studios make a second game. When they do its almost the same game.

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That looks pretty damn good. Its got a sort of classic feel to it in my opinion. It's also kinda good to know someone from the mapping and wading community is making an actual game. My only problems with it is the rapid fire thing and the "ow god my eyes".

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