Wow... Impressive and very informative guide Necrocat. I never thought of shmups having so much depth and your guide made me look at them at a totally different perspective to what im used to. Great stuff. Havent got the time to put them into practice, but i know i have learned so much in that post.
Haha, I am more of an enthusiast than an expert and more interested in the ship mechanics than the scores. I rarely push myself for high scores, so anybody that is 'owning' the Leaderboard is just as or more so qualified than myself at giving scoring advice. I find that a good run is dependent a lot on how much coin you want to spend (in general), the type of drops you get at any particular time and a little bit of luck. I achieved a five million score with the Phantom when I first bought it with no IAP boosts whatsoever. There are other times where I go and buy everything in the shop and then die right off the bat. Scoring is a fantastic component to this and every shooter, but the endgame for me is the weapon variety and El's delicious particle effects.
@Selachii I'm glad you enjoyed reading it! I've really enjoyed playing around and trying my best to figure out each and every game mechanic I could to improve my gameplay and I've learnt a lot during it (I'm not usually someone to play single player games) I'm hoping that helps people, especially as it seems to be the hardest ship to get used to. I was actually going to talk about every power up that included but I ran out of characters! The yellow alpha strike is a great weapon and I really enjoy the fact that it can't be wasted as it is lock on and that it creates green particles, but again I found even that 1 second was causing me quite a few problems with survivability; The purple is just so much power in one go! the pink one is pretty good too, but it has a second of lag after and doesn't deal quite enough damage to be reliable so I usually use those to clear scout waves with. @Exact-Psience I'm really glad that my guide has given you a different view on Shmups, I was hoping that I could shed light on most of the small things that are harder to notice and small changes in gameplay that people may not notice otherwise. I hope it does help you when do have time to pick it up again
Brainstorming another idea, a huge risk/reward concept... A ship that sucks energy from the enemy ships. I won't go any further until I get some feedback. EDIT: That is of course if anyone wants to give feedback
Haha, you called? I was looking for feedback too you know Well it sounds like a concept, but it could do anything at all! First thing it sounded like was the shogun as that's similar to that description. But then an idea came to me... What if it fired bullets based on the type of turret it destroyed last? I've got this image of fast single line bullets, explosive attacks, fiery rockets, that spinny massive one and goodness knows what the harpie's bullets would be like!
I agree Necrocat, I brought up the question of how to best play the Phantom, and wow, your guide gave me alot of good pointers and tips, and was an excellent read, so thank you.
I am sticking with the same toothpaste laser concept, but instead imaging that the laser sucks energy from the turrets once locked on. The toothpaste laser would literally suck the life force from the enemy ships and in turn your ship could use it for its own purposes, possibly to power some type of super attack, or maybe even to power the ship itself. You could enter the game with zero energy and have to sustain it by being a 'parasite' of sorts. Hmmm.
@Connector ah, looking back I can see your post now, yeah that sparked the idea in my head, I'm really glad that it was a good and helpful read for you
W00p W00p Firi Games is now 4 years old! Yep exactly. The pink's strength is its instant damage, I think it's the best Alpha Strike against scouts, but it lacks in total damage done. Really happy you like the game
Congrats! Also, you're about to hit your 2m Phoenix player landmark, making 2 diamond players! Well done Something which has impressed me a bit is how the game has had such growth after being released for ages. I started playing at around 13m players, and now were almost at 19m, players, you must be doin something right! are you advertising a lot?
Thanks! We have not done any advertising ever. For that matter we have not taken money from any external source either (other than those buying our games), we're truly indie! So far our snobby 'great games sell themselves' approach has worked out sufficiently As long as we can keep making games, we're pretty much satisfied. I must admit though, every 'next thing' needs to be more ambitious and we're able to do this at this point
Wow, that's great for that to have worked this well! Word of mouth must be working really good then if you're constantly getting recommended (I have as well to be fair) I'm looking forward to this 'next thing' being ambitious, sounds awesome, is that talking about the next big update for Phoenix HD or the next game? Also... success! I found an unlicensed screen recorder which is OK at recording, its got a bit of lag unfortunately at some points and I forgot to add background music before I uploaded it as I can't record sound, I'll re-upload it at some point but this is my first successful attempt at recording my Phantom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=liymJM5WIvw
WOOO!! I finally broke into the top 100 world scores for the Corsair... hit just under 14.5 million. =oD Woooooooo
Woh. Grats on the score and the top 100 placement! My highest in this entire game is an abyssmal 4.6M
Ha, thanks! And if it makes you feel any better - it's taken me YEARS to get that high. I got Phoenix when it originally came out (with only one ship... before it was Phoenix HD...) Actually... Phoenix is one of maybe 4-5 games from that time period (playing on my 2nd Gen Touch) that are still on my device today...
I know, I know... I play with em every time I get about 20k coins... I'll use em all up in about 4 games, then play without anything til I have 20k again. =oP
