Zenzizenzic (Playable!)

A small topic for english speaking users =)
Zenzizenzic
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The Kickstarter and Steam Greenlight campaigns for Zenzizenzic are as of now live!

You'll find lots of cool stuff there, like a new trailer, beta download, exciting plans, awesome rewards and tiers and if you're quick at it you'll be able to grab the early access reward!

So check it out and if you like what you see, every bit of support would be hugely appreciated. If you have feedback, I would especially love to hear it.

Here's a bit of info about the game:
Zenzizenzic is a high paced, adrenaline infused, abstract, challenging and addictive twin stick shoot 'em up bullet hell game for Windows, Mac and Linux! It features a beautiful, cohesive and abstract art style combined with thrilling, addictive one and two player gameplay along with a soundtrack that is sure to get the adrenaline pumping!

Zenzizenzic gives the player a compelling and challenging experience that strongly motivates the feeling of "let's try one more time!". Expect five well balanced, thought out and uniquely varied levels which can be conquered with an exotic selection of weaponry, ranging from screen filling lasers to black holes and time manipulating jumps.

Zenzizenzic takes a well established genre of games and aims to lift it up to the next level through highly responsive controls, modern gameplay mechanics, a unique art style and a blasting beat. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel of bullet hell and twin stick shoot 'em up games, it rather tries to make it the fastest, tightest and most agile of all.

The game is aimed at the players who seek a challenge. The progressive nature of the levels with each offering a new mechanic to overcome, the dynamically increasing difficulty as new enemies are introduced when the player performs well in the game and the rich and layered weapons offer the players a high skill ceiling, giving them the chance and means to test their skills to the fullest!

Zenzizenzic is scheduled for release for late July 2014 at a price point of €5.99 on digital distribution channels. It will be available on Windows, Mac and Linux. Grab it over at the Kickstarter which is currently running for 1€ off at the €5 pledge (or higher)!
And a couple of screens:
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Thank you kindly for your time,
Ruud Koorevaar
Developer of Zenzizenzic
Dernière modification par Zenzizenzic le 06 mai 2014, 17:13, modifié 12 fois.
Zenzizenzic
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Blogpost 8 Feb 2013

It was just a few months back when I started tinkering around with Unity 3D, a game development engine. With no previous experience of actually building games, coding and design, I hopped in, pressed a couple of buttons and added some code which I politely nicked from a tutorial while having no clue what any of it actually meant. A bit of messing about later and I actually had a somewhat functional game; a player controlled ship, shooting, bullets, a level, enemies and even a boss. Of course it looked like shit, but hey, it worked. And then it struck me. Here I had the ingredients to actually make something engaging, challenging, fun in a genre of which I always had a slight fascination for: a shoot-em-up, or shmup. I was going to build one of those I told myself, and while I’m at it I’m going to learn about Unity, coding and game design. That’s the course I set out to undertake. And this here is where I’ll be sharing some of the stuff that I come across while building this shmup, which I dubbed Zenzizenzic.

You can check me out on Twitterif you’d like to keep up to date through that channel. A Facebook page is up, although it’ll look rather bleak until I get some basic art assets into a semblance of readiness and toss them up there. But there’s that as well. Pick your poison!

Next time I’ll chat about what I foresee Zenzizenzic to (hopefully) eventually be! Stay tuned.

For the time being, here’s a bit of a teaser of Zenzizenzic in its current prototype-ish form.
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Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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For today here's a bit more extensive basic info about the game and how it's turning out. Next week hopefully some video footage :)

Blogpost 11 Feb 2013

So what's Zenzizenzic actually about? In the previous post I described a bit of how I came up to the point where I started messing about with this project. But it's probably quite useful to open up the curtains a bit and spend a few moments on explaining what the game is actually about.

In short: high octance and reactionary gameplay. As mentioned before, it's a shmup; a genre which per definition is quite fast paced. If you're a stranger to the genre just think of the old games like Asteroids, maybe R-Type rings a bell. Otherwise, think of crazily skilled (probably Asian) people maneuvering their ship through an insane maze of oncoming bullets on an arcade cabinet. Zenzizenzic floats around in the same space as those types of games. Your ship, bullets, kill or be killed; that's it. Of course, there's a bit more to it than just that, which I will uncover in detail over the upcoming weeks. But let's take a look at some of the basic aspects of Zenzizenzic.

Zenzizenzic is a twin-stick shmup for the PC which is controlled with a PC compatible Xbox360 gamepad. This means that movement and aiming/shooting is done with both the analog sticks on the gamepad and that you have full freedom of movement on a 2D playing field. It also means that keyboard and/or mouse control is not supported, as it would plainly feel awful. You simply need more analog input than what the keyboard/mouse can support. Not making compromises there. I'm purely developing it for the PC as well, since I basically have no clue yet how to make it Xbox360 (for example) compatible. It's also just a lot easier for me and for you guys from an accessibility viewpoint. Although the Xbox360 gamepad is a bit a hindrance, but that's just something we'll have to deal with.

Zenzizenzic is about pushing yourself and your ship to their limits. You can customize your loadout with a variety of synergetic and multipurpose weapons before starting a level, either alone or with a (local) buddy. If all works out from a technical point of view, the levels will be dynamic in such a way that the difficulty will adjust to some degree based on your performance, or whether you are there with a partner or not. This will mostly be centered around giving the player(s) more stuff to shoot at (or be killed by) if they do well. But more details will be saved for a specific post on level design!

I'm not an graphical artist, so the style of the game will be minimal, as to minimize the risk of me crapping all over it. I'm going for a primarily grey-scale colour setup, with the important bits (like enemy bullets) being highlighted with bright colours and sharp shapes. Simple, but hopefully effective! Of course everything you see of the game these few weeks is prototype stuff, so nothing is necessarily final.

Concerning sounds, there's nothing there at the moment. I haven't been able to spend much time on that aspect just yet, but I'm sure I will in the near future and spill some of it over on here!

Stay tuned. No screenshots this time around, but hopefully next time I'll have a bit of gameplay footage ready!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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First gameplay video is online. Go check it out! :)

http://youtu.be/J5eiKekgIWk
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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Undef
Ruineur de Clavier
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Man i just had a look to your game teaser and i can tell you that it looks awesome. It has proper level design, hell of bullets and cool weapons.
So far the teleport skill is my favorite, the bullet aspirator looks also nice.

Now i will be waiting for a beta release. Good job :binouze:
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Undef-UND a écrit :Man i just had a look to your game teaser and i can tell you that it looks awesome. It has proper level design, hell of bullets and cool weapons.
So far the teleport skill is my favorite, the bullet aspirator looks also nice.

Now i will be waiting for a beta release. Good job :binouze:
Thanks! I can't give you an eta on when a playable test version will be available, but updates happen regularly, so well, stay tuned :)
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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-SGN-
Super Grand Nevrosé
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Nice! It reminds me Space Inveders Infinity Gene. Did you play it? Is it a coincidence?
Zenzizenzic
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-SGN- a écrit :Nice! It reminds me Space Inveders Infinity Gene. Did you play it? Is it a coincidence?
Thanks, much appreciated :) I actually didn't know that game existed, but it looks interesting, will have to check it out!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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New blog post added where I take a look at how I approach the level design.
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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A couple of new screenshots showing some slight design changes in the enemies, the player and some other bits and pieces!

Here's the link to the blogpost: http://zenzizenzicblog.tumblr.com/post/ ... wing#notes

And here are the links to the screens separately:
http://24.media.tumblr.com/34d88ea167e6 ... 1_1280.png
http://25.media.tumblr.com/61a8cab35e31 ... 2_1280.png
http://24.media.tumblr.com/5be96039cb3d ... 3_1280.png
http://24.media.tumblr.com/27c7debc048a ... 4_1280.png
http://25.media.tumblr.com/48b969b1db87 ... 5_1280.png

Let me know what you think! :)
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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I'm wondering, what's your guys' opinion on implementing something similar to Super Meatboy's warp zones, reminiscent of the old school bonus levels in Mario? What I'm thinking about is when you went through the level as an excellent killing machine (i.e. performing really well and triggering all the optional waves to spawn (they spawn when you were able to kill normal waves quickly enough -> skill and level knowledge required)), that an area in the level appears, right before the boss of the level spawns, which when you enter it (optional, after a few seconds it fades) teleports you to a new level in which a challenge is introduced (like simply surviving, without any shooting). After completing or failing this challenge (you have a single life in there) you are returned to the point before the boss and continue as normal, but with the bonus points from the survival challenge. Do you think this would have a place in Zenzizenzic? Do you think this would be a cool addition? Don't think it has been implemented before in a shmup, so I wonder how it would feel like with it being in there in the way I described.

Also, a couple of new screens of the boss battle I'm currently working on are live! http://zenzizenzicblog.tumblr.com/post/ ... oss-battle
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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Palgork
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Not sure that the one life attempt of a bonus stage is something really good, because you have no reason to refuse this bonus stage (it's extra point even if you fail it !).

Extra stage or part of a stage already exist in several Cave game : Ura path in DDP DFK optional stage in Deathsmiles ... if you have to continue on the special path when you choose it on each of thiese game, it's for a good reason I guess : the game don't give you a win-win option if you accept the challenge, it give you a win or screw your run choice.
95% des bugs se situe entre la chaise et le clavier ....
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I see, thanks for the info!

Possibly it might then be simply better to carry on the remaining life total from the normal level. If he loses any of those during the bonus level, they are gone for good in that run. So if he loses all of his lives during the bonus level it's game over.
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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I'm going for adding bonus levels and am currently building one. I tossed a couple of screens of it online :)

http://zenzizenzicblog.tumblr.com/post/ ... onus-level
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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Demo is getting there! I’d say about 2-3 more weeks to go!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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Zenzizenzic will be playable at Anime 2013, the largest anime con in the Netherlands, on Saturday the 1st of June. If you happen to be there, drop by and say hi!

http://www.animecon.nl/
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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The game is playable now! It's a test version for the demo release, so I'd love to receive feedback on how to further improve this build.

Check the first post of the thread for the details.
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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Indie Statik posted quite an awesome article on Zenzizenzic! :D

http://indiestatik.com/2013/06/23/zenzizenzic/
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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New version is up. Playing on a 16:10 resolution with the mouse returns in a few issues with mouse position, so either use a controller, or play in 16:9 resolution. Hope to get the time to have that fixed soon.

You can download the new version here: http://www.bithuffel.nl/zenzizenzic.zip

And here's a gameplay video I whipped up last night: http://youtu.be/ZggvugkjYiM
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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And again, new version!

http://www.bithuffel.nl/zenzizenzic.zip

Lots of small changes and some cool features added. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
BriseFlots
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It looks awesome! I4m gonna give it a try and I'll come back in a few weeks -I will have to take a break from PC games for hollidays soon- to give you my impressions :)
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BriseFlots a écrit :It looks awesome! I4m gonna give it a try and I'll come back in a few weeks -I will have to take a break from PC games for hollidays soon- to give you my impressions :)
Cool! Thanks for checking it out and enjoy your holidays :)
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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Mortipoil
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Seems addictive and very challenging.
Will try it asap!
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Zenzizenzic
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Mortipoil a écrit :Seems addictive and very challenging.
Will try it asap!
Thanks, hope you'll enjoy it!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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I’ve been thinking about new weapons to implement for a while now and I may have come across a viable one to add to the arsenal: Quake!

The Quake weapon would be a fairly close range full 360 degrees area of effect weapon. In a sphere around the player the area of effect would slow down bullets and damage enemies for as long as you keep it activated and keep the enemies and bullets in the area of effect. The longer you keep it activated, the larger the radius becomes. This means you got to stick close to enemies to damage them, but will also slow down the bullets they fire (for as long as the bullets are in the effect area, when they exit the area they resume at their normal speed), giving you the opportunity to dodge them. You could also of course just use it to find a way through an oncoming onslaught of bullets in a defensive manner.

What do you say? If you have any cool ideas about this weapon, or possibly any other weapon, drop a comment somewhere! I’d greatly appreciate your input.
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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Some news!

- New build: http://bithuffel.nl/zenzizenzic.html (balance changes, multiple fixes)
- New trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlF5qbNteI4
- Support Zenzizenzic on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/f ... =177371672
- Grab the soundtrack: http://bignic.bandcamp.com/album/zenzizenzic-soundtrack

Also some screens of work in progress bits:
- A new level selection screen
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- Screen of level 3
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- Screen of level 3
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Note that the build still only consists of a single level, which is going to be level 2. Level 1 will feature fixed bullet trajectories, level 2 aimed at location bullets, level 3 homing bullets, level 4 scaling bullets and level 5 (the final level) enemies that will use player abilities.

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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Zenzizenzic was nominated for the Indie Dev Grant! If it were to win, an awesome bit of financial support would be given to further develop the game by the lovely folks over at Bundle In A Box.

It has to go through a voting process, and you can help out in that, which would be hugely appreciated! While you're at it you'll also get some cool indie games which people worked hard on to develop and support those devs as well.

Head on over to Bundle In A Box, grab the bundle for 2$ (or more if you'd want) for 5 cool games, and after activating it you can vote for Zenzizenzic to help it win the Indie Dev Grant! There's not a lot of voting going on, so every vote weighs a lot and Zenzi's got a good chance at winning! It's not a matter of hundreds of votes, but just a dozen or so to take the lead.

So if you'd like to grab a couple of cool games and help Zenzizenzic out while you're at it, I would be so grateful!

Thank you for your time!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
Zenzizenzic
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A fresh beta update is available on bitHuffel.nl. Go give it a whirl, and let me know what you think (and if something breaks)! Also, some fine cover art, 'cause why not!

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Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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Mako
L'âge mou
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Inscription : 05 mars 2013, 13:44

Hello Zenzizenzic! Amazing graphics and music! Proficiaat! :aaah:

I'have just tried to run your game. The tutorial works perfectly fine, also the " test mode" in the weapon selection menu works very well.

But when the game starts in level 1 it seems that there is a graphic bug on the ship , then it can't take anymore bonus or use a secondary weapon.

The tutorial made me really excited about your game! :p

Tot Ziens!
Le temps d'apprendre à vivre il est déjà trop tard.
Zenzizenzic
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Thanks! And thanks again for catching that bug. Any other level should work fine, just that one that's bugged. Fixing it right now!
Developing a twin-stick shmup dubbed Zenzizenzic.
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