We had a super cool art piece made by our friend and terrific artist Romano Molenaar (he also draws comics like, say euh, Batman!). I rendered the enemies straight from the in game models, including turrets so it's nice for you guys to see everything from another angle for a change This is a cropped version, a link to the complete version is at the bottom of this post. Complete epic Phoenix HD art piece
I had tried out several shumps on the iPad, but always came back to Phoenix HD... The others aren't even installed anymore.
That's great to hear @iPadisGreat, it's overwhelming to hear (and see) how long some of you guys have been enjoying our game. It's really an honor to share this journey with all of you Like with @Guise, nice to see you again, with us from the very start. Asking for separate mute buttons for music and sound... they're in Guise, they're in
Oh man, can't believe you remember that! It's amazing how much Phoenix has evolved and improved since its initial release. I almost wish I had Phoenix 1.0 to compare and see how far the game's come. I've bought (and will continue to buy) every new ship you guys have created and never regretted it. If you keep adding to Phoenix or release another title, I'll be enjoying your stuff. Keep up the great work! PS Really like the new ship. It's now my 2nd favorite after the Corsair.
Phoenix HD new ship "Striker" Report Ok, bought the 99 cent inapp for the Striker ship right after I downloaded the update with the new ship after viewing the mini video by the ships (actually, the mini videos I think were my idea a long time ago, I suggested to Selachii to add videos of all the ships so more people would know what all the ships were and would be more likely to buy them). Well, to be honest, there was a big problem at first. I couldn't even find the Striker ship after updating! So baffling that I asked Selachii to help in finding how to find the ship and buy the inapp, since it wasn't showing in the ship section in the Menu. Lo and behold, I was informed that you have fo scroll down by swiping your finger! Boy, that sure was hard to find, but finally was able to view the video and to buy the Striker for 99 cents. So all is good now. Ok, was a little busy recently, Until tonight that is, got to tryout the new Striker, as well as play some with my other favorite ships, the Trinity and Corsair. Tonight, I have chosen to play on my ipad 4 with a hybrid stylus (a mesh tipped stylus that is far better than a regular stylus and is great with shmups). So with the hybrid stylus in my right hand, I proceeded to play three long games, one each with the ships Trinity, Corsair, and Striker. Before, my favorite two ships were the Trinity and the Corsair. The Corsair is fun cause it has an awesome missile launching ability, looks buff, is easy to play, amd for me, seems like the ship that I get the highest scores on. For beginners, this may well be the best first ship to buy, cause it is relatively easy to play, and has some awesome cool looking firepower. The Trinity was the last ship added, it is way cool, a Teleporting ship. Remove your finger from the screen, and you go into a slow time warp. Press on another parf of the screen, and you will teleport to that position. So in a way, this is the most advanced ship, and maybe hardest to play. I got no idea if you get good enough, if this is good for high scores, but the thrill factor is through the roof. Before it was my favorite ship to play for fun, though offen, I didn't last long. The Striker is kind of a missile ship, but you have to auto lock on to the enemies, and then release your finger to fire. In terms of difficulty playing, it is kinda half way inbetween the Trinity and Corsair. So the Striker is good in that it is a good compromise in fast action thrilling play, and more careful guarded play. Have to say, I like all three of the above ships the best out of the bunch, they all have a lot of different good points, so it is hard for me to say which one I like best at this point. For high scores solid gameplay, Corsair maybe best. For fast action crazy thrilling fun, the Trinity maybe best. For a combination of both aspects, the Striker maybe the best. Anyway, I recommend buying the Corsair, Trinity, and Striker as a group set. They all are great fun ships in Phoenix HD! Coming soon, my iCade joystick report of these ships on Phoenix HD!
About the leaderboards, is there any option other than the city-based leaderboards? I would like to be able to see my own best score with any given ship independent of where I happened to be sitting when I scored it. I'd also like to be able to see where I stand globally rather than just in a particular town. Are these features there and I'm just missing them? More detail: I'm generally more interested in beating my own scores than in leaderboards. In this game though it seems that there is no simple way to see what my own best score is if I've played the game in more than one location. Instead I have to tap on every location on the map where I've played the game, and manually figure out what my best score is. If I'm just trying to beat my own score, I don't really care whether my previous best score was set at home or during lunch break at work, but the way the leaderboards seem to work I can't just see my best score. Second, the location-based leaderboards aren't so interesting if there aren't many other players in your location. For example if I play at work there are 91 other people on the leaderboard for my work location. At home it's even worse: there are only 15 people on the leaderboard. On the one hand it's nice that I can be #4 in my hometown, but on the other hand given that I know I'm not very good at the game and I'm already #4, that doesn't give me very high to shoot for. I'd rather have the option of seeing where I am on a global leaderboard as well. Third, I'm more interested in seeing how I compare to friends who play the game, regardless of where they are geographically, than I am in seeing how I compare to strangers who happen to be near me. It would be nice if there was some way of adding friends, or using Game Center leaderboards. Out of these three complaints, the most important one, and probably the easiest to fix, is the first. I really just want it to be simple to see if I've beat my previous high score with a given ship independent of where I happened to be I sitting when I played.
Another bit of feedback is, I'd like the option of disabling the dynamic difficulty feature and just letting me manually set the difficulty. First of all, it seems like it only ever increases the difficulty, but I've never seen it decrease the difficulty no matter how badly I'm doing. Second, I'd rather be able to change the difficulty depending on my mood rather than have the game adjust it for me. Sometimes I just want to relax and dodge bullets in easy mode, and sometimes I want to really concentrate and play on hard.
This is how it was before, where we could select difficulty, I too would like to have the option to change difficulties cause I play it with touch, icade, and mfi, and all I liked different difficulty settings.
Here's a question for experienced shmup players. I've just recently developed an interest in bullet-hell shmups and have gotten a few iOS ones. So far I've gotten Bug Princess 2, Phoenix HD, Dodonpachi Resurrection HD, and AngerForce - Strikers. It seems to me that out of these, the bullet patterns in Phoenix HD are the least predictable. At the start of each run in Phoenix the patterns seem reasonably predictable, but after a couple of minutes there always comes a point where there are bullet streams overlapping from 5 different directions and there's no longer any pattern I can discern to exploit to my advantage. At that point it just devolves into how quick my reflexes can be to steer the hitbox of my ship through tiny little maze-like paths, and I quickly die. I do quite a bit better in the other three games I mentioned. Even when they do get too hard for me, I usually feel like I could see a path through and just didn't spot it quickly enough, so it still feels fair. Is it just that I'm too unskilled at the genre to spot the patterns in Phoenix HD, or does this game really generate bullets with less of a pattern than some other shmups? I do like some of the things about this game, like how all the ships have different strengths and weaknesses which creates different playing strategies. And the graphics are awesome. Overall though it just feels the least satisfying of the ones I've tried so far, because of how chaotic and pattern-less the bullets start to seem.
Thanks for your questions and feedback bilboa! I think I can answer them all - The location based nature of the Leaderboards brings some unique characteristics and you've definitely spotted a couple of them. I think I can answer two questions with one answer though. To view 'your highest score ever' simply go to 'Your High Scores' from the main menu and tap the 'minus' button in the top right until you've reached the 'World' level. This means it will pick the highest scores you've ever submitted on this world (currently we do not support any other planets yet ). Continent or Country might suffice, that depends on your travel and playing behaviour. Anyway, the score pin will now contain your best scores for each ship. This is also an answer for your question to get more players to compete against. Simply zoom out to compete against more players. - Comparing your score against friends is indeed cool. On the one hand this is complicated, because it would be cool to beat your friends in a specific location, preferably his home location, but then the interface becomes even more complex. Comparing on world level would also be possible, simply picking 'your highest per ship anywhere', but this would ignore the whole location based feature. - With regards to the dynamic difficulty, this has changed a lot over time and it's currently more straight forward than it used to be. Firstly, the game is now optimised to be played at 5 stars. Secondly, the difficulty is no longer adjusted real-time while playing. The game now raises your difficulty based on your highest achieved score and never goes back down. It ramps up in steps, with the highest level kicking in when you have achieved over 1 million points. All games after this will be on 5 stars. Any difference in difficulty beyond this point is caused by the randomised encounters. The difficulty can be reset to 1 star in the settings menu, after which the climb to 5 stars will start over. I hope this answers your questions, feel free to post any questions or comments!
Thank you for your reply. The minus sign is what I missed. I noticed one other small problem with the leaderboard window. I tap the info button by my score and it brings up a new window with a Medal Targets and Top Scores tab. If I go to the Top Scores tab and scroll to the bottom, it shows my own top score for a moment and then immediately my top score disappears because it displays more top scores above me. I understand that you've implemented a feature to lazily load the scores as you scroll down, but I think it should be a little bit harder to trigger the next batch of scores to show. Currently it's nearly impossible to view my own score from the Top Scores window, since it almost immediately disappears as soon as I scroll down to it. Maybe you could make it so my own score stays visible even when more scores get pulled in, or maybe you could make it so you have to scroll farther past the end of the list to trigger it downloading the next batch of scores. It's not a big deal since since I can also find my worldwide score from the main high scores window, or from the medals tab if I've gotten a medal. It's just a little flaw that would be nice to fix though. Thanks.
I took advantage of the slight discount if you buy all ships plus the coin tripler as one purchase, so I have all 6. I've experimented with each a little, but I've actually gone back to practicing with the Phoenix for now because I'm not very experienced with shmups, and I want to get better at the basic dodging and aiming gameplay without being distracted by thinking about using special abilities. I actually improved a little since my post about bullet patterns, and finally broke 1 million. I'm now #1 out of the 15 players in my hometown with the Phoenix. I guess that's one benefit of the location based leaderboards, since I'm sure that's the only way I'd be #1.
On thinking a little more, I think one thing that makes Phoenix feel a little harder to me than the other shumps I've tried is the fact that it's endless instead of level based. I'm not sure I actually last longer time-wise in the other ones, but the fact that as I get better I can clear more levels before dying gives me a very tangible sense of having progressed farther in the game. In Phoenix the only tangible sign of progression is the score. Maybe keeping track of the time would partially substitute for having levels to give a sense of progression, so when I die I might see for example that I lasted 30 seconds longer than the last time.
