Play game
Hotcake Laboratory's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Gameplay | #35 | 3.079 | 3.308 |
| Balance (Challenge and Fairness) | #40 | 2.864 | 3.077 |
| Story / Writing | #43 | 2.506 | 2.692 |
| Concept | #46 | 3.366 | 3.615 |
| Overall | #48 | 3.043 | 3.269 |
| Use of Theme (Retroactive, Retrospective, Retro) | #49 | 3.366 | 3.615 |
| Visuals | #54 | 3.043 | 3.269 |
| Audio / Music | #59 | 2.506 | 2.692 |
| Use of Green (Green themes, style, use of Sanae/Mima, etc) | #64 | 1.468 | 1.577 |
Ranked from 26 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Team Members
Clb184, YiterVGM
Streaming Permission
Yes
Touhoufest Showcase Permission
Yes
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Comments
I love the concept of the game a lot. Photo-shooters force you to think a different way and I really appreciate that. The music is also very nice, and appropriately fitting in my estimate. It is perhaps my favorite part of the game. The gameplay was a little confusing to start, certainly. Z being shield and X being shoot felt counter-intuitive and I often got caught up.
Once I got a hold of it, the challenge was brutal. The combination of slow cooldowns and the OHKO was especially killer, as shield and shoot both use up the same resource which means you have to choose between guarding and shooting, which extends the possibility of dying, which is a brutal punishment because one hit starts you right over again. Related to the cooldown is the fact it means you essentially have to either play aggressive-- and risk getting one-shotted-- or be conservative and choose between laser and bullet to clear (in the first stage for example.) And considering you can only do max 2 lasers per and about 4-8 bullets per, it takes a lot of cycles considering clearances were 15 and 50 respectively.
That said, there's a lot of good in this game too. Though I do admit being challenged and frustrated at points, it was still good fun. Oddly, I did encounter an issue where a dialogue between characters simply did not play on start until about my 10th time through... though I think that may be related to why I had difficulties starting up the game to begin with. Lol. But once I saw the portraits, they were very nice, with witty dialogue attached to them.
I'm not familiar at all with Seihou, but it seems you did them a pretty good service here. Nice job overall!
a seihou photography game is pretty cool. Although it took me a while to realize how to play it. I really like it. Although having X be the fire button and Z be the guard button is a little odd to me, I'm used to the opposite.
Only relevant thing I have to say is that cancelled bullets could go away faster. The cancel effect lasts for like half a second, which I can easily imagine be confusing in high bullet density/spawn rate. Goes double for lasers. The effect's cool but it's kinda scary at this slow animation speed.
Anyway, the Jam version's very tough but fair and par for the course for a StB-type game. It may be too hard for non-shooters though which is why I made a video of said version.
I think I can make the bullets go instantly in alpha 128 and/or Add Blend mode and also make the lasers shorten when cleared.
And reduce a bit the animation time.
Fun photo game. I found VIVIT-1 the most challenging, but in a good way. I like how the game rewarded more aggressive play.
I feel that the unfocused speed was too fast, is that normal for Seihou?
Extra points for working with low level libraries, and you definitely nailed that 2000s look in the art, 3D models, and UI. The music is nice too.
I took Kioh Gyoku's Morgan player as reference, and yeah, she's fast.
However, I didn't look at KOG's source code this time and all was just based on my experience.
Comparing speeds and doing some resizing to fit KOG (KOG Y: 480 while in my game: 1080):
-KOG -> 6 units per frame.
-My game -> 8.88 units per frame.
So it seems is faster than normal.
Also just found out that Morgan is the fastest of all playable characters in Kioh Gyoku. lol
Btw, in all versions you can move the left-right keys in the select menu to change scene (In this case VIVIT), but it seems it wasn't clear, sorry...
The orange smoke in the second stage really doesn't stand out enough to understand it's an attack, especially since there is also another unharmful white smoke FX. To the point I thought it was a bug and I took a video to show you, but after rewinding it a few times I understood.
The third stage would have been better either by being more difficult or by requiring fewer laser photos. In its current state, it just felt like waiting, especially since there doesn't seem to be the fast recharge mechanic like in ZUN's photo games.
Otherwise good game. I do love those kind of photo games.
In Gates-2 is supposed to be fire, but it seems it didn't look like that, gonna see how to change it.
In Gates-3 I'll take that in count, perhaps gonna change the lasers to be horizontal instead of vertical, so it's more fair.
Game's working on my end, good game. 🙏
Please note that closing the game was unresponsive when clicking X for some reason. had to end task.
Updated all the versions, now with error checkers and removed a debug flag that caused the game to not start.
this looks like a wonderful game, but it doesn't boot for some reason, the_0003 throws the error "couldn't initialize direct2D direct 3D or DirectWire"
may I kindly ask what engine you used? squirrel?
Hi, I made the engine.
Is something related to my Direct3D/2D/Write library and I was just looking at this with someone else.
Gonna try to see if it works now, couldn't try my engine on other systems so sorry for the trouble.
oh my thats so great! how wonderful of you! now I cant wait to play, just from the art the game looks so promising!
You can now, problem is fixed (Gonna update the other versions later). ; )
It doesn't boot for me. No error message either, just nothing happens.
Uhh, that's weird.
What are your system specs?
This thing works with D3D11 with Shader Model 4.0, most likely is that since Squirrel emits an error message.
Try downloading V0.003, perhaps it can tell the error.
------------------
System Information
------------------
Time of this report: 4/9/2024, 08:53:14
Machine name: DESKTOP-49V35GN
Machine Id: {DEF7D24A-C213-43A1-A276-8C7B0FA5A071}
Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 19045) (19041.vb_release.191206-1406)
Language: French (Regional Setting: French)
System Manufacturer: ASUS
System Model: System Product Name
BIOS: 2006 (type: UEFI)
Processor: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X 6-Core Processor (12 CPUs), ~3.7GHz
Memory: 16384MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 16266MB RAM
Page File: 12238MB used, 18236MB available
Windows Dir: C:\Windows
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
Miracast: Available, with HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported
DirectX Database Version: 1.0.8
DxDiag Version: 10.00.19041.3636 64bit Unicode
With the new upload of the 0.003 version, I get "Couldn't initialize Direct3D, Direct2D or DirectWrite"
Gonna take a look into that.
Do you have a Discord account?
Wanna try if it doesn't error now, I added also to use a Software driver in case Hardware driver doesn't work.
I went to visual studio and got those additional logs:
D3D11CreateDevice: Flags (0x2) were specified which require the D3D11 SDK Layers for Windows 10, but they are not present on the system.
These flags must be removed, or the Windows 10 SDK must be installed.
Flags include: D3D11_CREATE_DEVICE_DEBUG
Then I followed step 2 of this: https://stackoverflow.com/a/76985931 and it launched.
If you want me to uninstall those graphic tools and test again to see if it now works right off the bat without the user having to do anything in particular, my discord username is worm38. I'm no longer available due to work right now though.
Already fixed the problem, redownload V0.003.
Edit: Yeah, I forgot about the Debug flags, sorry.
Music is not done yet, it'll be implemented as soon as it's finished (The BGM for the stages).