Oh, I already made 20 posts.
Guess I'll show you what I've been up to lately.

Like this.

Mostly, it's been graphical for OO, with other 70 animations per direction to work on. A lot of them are small things like idle poses or variants like the difference between walking neutrally or walking while feeling nervous.


This too.

This here is the quick throw, which was mentioned before I think. Basically, when you pull up a piece of flooring or an item or what have you, you have the option to hold it over your head and run around and aim or quickly shuck it in front of you. The difference is between tapping and holding. A tap will bring it above your head, but holding it will throw it right away like in the image.


It's a little fast.

Finding ways to smooth out platforming is big too. Edge hanging is something that when I added it, it seemed silly to think of the game without it. Like with throwing, you have a delayed version and a quick version. To quick hang, just hold in the direction you're moving, and you'll pull yourself up automatically and keep running. Otherwise, you'll hang down with the option to pull yourself up, drop down, kick off and triangle jump, or just hang out. You can also use the jump button to alter how high up you pull yourself, so you can either just shortly hop up or sling yourself into the air from a ledge.


Still working on this.

Of course, environments are a big part of what I need to work on too. I'm still revising this area for instance. You can see OO in his little winter coat, too. The Parfait Flats are too cold to survive in just the white sweater, so the snow suit is needed.

Then of course, there's things like this.




A pioneer in its time, Terror Dash! stepped away from run and gun gameplay in favor of strategic survival, putting players in control of five very different characters at once. Hardly able to destroy every enemy, the player would find themselves jumping at the slightest noise and running for their lives from hordes of aliens through all ten large areas. Its release on the Guitar 5900 marked the beginning of a new breed of home console games, and despite criticism for its violent nature, Terror Dash! has survived to this day to be an exclusive part of Life+.

Oh yeah, and the RSS feed is up. Not sure why it wasn't before.

This isn't Life+ at all.
Today I'd like to talk about Electrum. Electrum is an arcade shooter classic. It costs a single token for each life. The token exchange rate is 1 for 25 coins.


Lives are on top, then score, then the wave timer, then the wave number.
Electrum's gameplay is that of a survival shooter. You shoot as much as you can until your lives run out, running through an infinite number of swarms of enemies.


'As much as you can' isn't much at first.
The first wave is a warm-up, if you can't get past this wave you should probably move on.


Don't shoot this one.
After the wave timer counts down to zero, enemies stop coming. You still have to survive all of the bullets and enemies on screen, though. When the coast is clear, a carrier flies in to give you a 1-up or Power-Up for your gun.


Saucers divide the playing field into sections, making it harder to move.
Up until a certain wave, a new enemy is introduced every new wave. The frequency of enemies flying onto the screen increases as well.


It's still pretty tame.
Because you never know where the enemies are coming from, Electrum is all about raw reflexes and skill.


You can feel the impact of each hit.
The screen shakes a little for each enemy hit, each explosion that goes off, and whenever you die. Watching your ship becomes very important when things get heated, so if you have trouble keeping track you can always stop shooting. You'll earn less points, but you might live longer. It's up to you how you go about it.


The double-shot is helpful when enemies are grouped.
Each enemy destroyed without dying increases your combo count by one. The score you get for each enemy is calculated by taking a base value, and adding 10*your current combo. This makes it possible to earn very high scores if you can avoid death.


I ran into it.
Of course, you probably can't do that forever. Running into an enemy or bullet makes your ship explode. You lose one level of gun power, one life, and your combo resets to zero. You gain a few precious seconds of invincibility when you spawn again. When you don't have any lives left...


This is a pretty average rank.
It's game over. You can insert more of your tokens any time during gameplay, but once you get to this screen that's all she wrote. You'll see your score and receive a rank based on that, and actually get a prize based on your rank. I haven't shown you everything from this game, but rather gave you a basic idea. Hopefully you'll enjoy it for yourself!

All that said, Electrum is only available in Life+.