Jets'n'Guns - classic side-scrolling shooter

[Tovy]

Hello

our company, Rake in Grass, is proud to announce the release of our latest
game - Jets'n'Guns (http://jng.rakeingrass.com). Our goal was to take up
such icons of action-gaming as Tyrian, 1942, Tubular Words or R-type. And
we worked really hard to close to our dream-action game though, which you
might want to check.

You can find a freeware demo of the game at
http://download.rakeingrass.com/JnGDemoSetup.exe

More information: http://jng.rakeingrass.com

Pavel T..

[Dan MacDonald]

Wow, I remember seeing screen shots for this at Dexterity a year or so ago. It looks really great, I'll have to try it out.

EDIT** hmm the download timed out on me about 1/2 way through... getting lots of traffic?

[Yossarian]

Awesome game. Truly stunning graphically, and fun as hell. The aspect of actually buying your weapons and outfitting your ship brings a real fresh twist to the whole scroller thing. Less about power-ups and more about getting new gear. I have a feeling this aspect alone will drive sales. People will really want to get access to all the goodies if they are anything like what you start with in the demo.

Only two notes on it:

1. You REALLY need someone who is a native english speaker to help you with some of the language in the game. There are some wrong verb tenses (e.g. Sell when it should say Sold, using Sale instead of Sell, etc) scattered around in quite a few places, and some of the translations to the text are a little sloppy. You'll have a few people turned off by this, although I don't think it impacted the game, it was just obvious that it was done by a non english speaking team.

2. The second note may be more of general business question that I"m not familiar with, but if your DirectX requirements are over what is shipped with Windows XP, you really may want to think about packaging the required DirectX with your game (I'm just not sure if you *can* do that).

It will mean added size, but right now you get a pretty cryptic message about not having a .DLL (the DX9.DLL). I immediately understood what I needed, and went and downloaded it, but many users may not. If you can't package DX9 with the game, then I'd suggest capturing that error and making it more descriptive. Tell users in the error dialog that they need to go download it from www.microsoft.com, or better yet, tell them that AND launch IE to the appropriate page for them.


Otherwise, let me say it again, VERY cool. I'll probably be picking up a copy of this myself.

[svero]

I think the game itself is great. I don't like the interface outside the game at all. It feels kind of cluttered and hard to get into and I think it will put some people off. It took me a while to figure out I had to equip the ship and how that all fitted together with the campaign and so on. If it were me I'd redo the interface with an emphesis on clarity and try to reduce any clutter. Really lead players in. I only played the first level, but the in game play was quite good. I found weapon selection slightly overwhelming at first. It took me a few tries to get a configuration I really liked to play the level with. I'd be inclined to have a level before the first one where players learn the mechanics of buying the right weapons before they're totally thrown into the fray. Overall though it's a really slick game. I quite liked it. I just wonder where you'll sell it! If only there were somewhere on the net to really promote games like this without spending a lot of money.

[patrox]

Wooooo!

I've been waiting for that game since i played the demo years ago!

Then you sold the rights to a publisher as far as i remember, what happened with that?

It's finally out! yay!

pat.

[patrox]

I can't seem to equip my ship with weapons i can't pass level 1 ( i die near the first turret )

Also once i'm dead i'm out of money when i restart a game.

Am I supposed to use several keys to shoot ? ( i can't find the help file either )
I agree with svero about the interface, it's very confusing, just having to press "back" to go forward is weird.

Thanks.
pat.

[tolik]

I've played like 20 SHMUPs in the past month... Let's try to see that one, it looks promising. I've played Tyrian for 1000+ hours (yes, that's hundreds of full-time days), this was in the distant past. I hope your game will be much more hardcore and less casual than anything else showing up here in the past few weeks. I'm giving it a shot right now and checking the screenshots I can congratulate you on doing another masterpiece. My favorite SHMUPs are Tyrian, Einhander and Zero Gunner 1/2.

I hope you'll beat Steel Saviour and old Solaris 104

[GrahamGoring]

I think that the interface is unnecessarily clunky (especially the tabs for the menus at the right) and first time around it's not obvious at all how to buy weapons and install them. However the game is bright, brash, contains a wonderful eye for detail and destruction on nigh-on unprecedented levels and so you can count me as a customer. I shall be placing my order this evening.

Btw, looking at the ordering page it seems if you order it on CD then the game itself costs $24.95 but then you have to also select the Order On CD option which adds a further sum to the transaction so that the final cost is more like $35. Is that a mistake?

[tolik]

Man, this does cost 25+ dollars.
This is VERY HARDCORE GAME! Luckily, only keyboard controls are good enough to play it (autoremoval of any casual market). I see Poland Atari scene roots here with all the chippy metal tunes and bloody gfx.

I was able to reach "rail gun ship" thrice which killed me from the first shot every time. It took me almost an hour (like in Tyrian!) to figure out what are the best weapons for this campaign.

Interface is clear and nice (for those who played Tyrian and other complex SHMUPs with storyline).

Too bad I can't buy Atarix in this version G'old 65XE

I wonder how many levels this demo does have.

[patrox]

When you switch from fullscreen to window mode, the mouse is disabled, the cursor is glued in the middle of the screen.

Great game, for hardcore players only. ( still stuck at the beginning of level 1 )

pat.

[Andy]

I saw only screenshots so far Tovy but...

Perfection!

PS I'll give it a try as soon as I will find the way to download 19 MB.

Thanks,

[Reactor]

That is one really fun game to play! I made it to the end of the first level, but I accidentally clicked escape (after loosing against the end boss a few times) and lost my checkpoint position. You might want to add in a confimation so that kind of thing doesn't happen to people. Anyway, you get top marks for one of the best shoot'em up games I've played in years. Great work

[tolik]

Pity there's only one level.

I finally made it through first check (there's hull integrity +50% which I didn't make to take playing first hour) point and then, at once, made right to the boss and almost killed. Then I was unlucky for 5 times but finally killed the boss.
Same level. Everything suddenly became too hard. The best weapons I could buy couldn't kill the transport ship...

Awesome game.

[Dan MacDonald]

I've tried 3 times to download it, the download keeps timing out...

[oNyx]

Great game. Tons of partikles etc and not a single stutter. (I'm talking about a 500mhz machine here) Good job

I'd also had my problems with the interface. But it was pretty usable after a while.

No gamepad support. Uh. Thought I can only play with the mouse... therefore I did that... later I found out that I can also use curors, ctrl and alt.

Once you have your ship equipped with a good combinations of weapons it's pretty ok difficulty wise. Beat the final boss... and then that level again? The second go was much harder, but I also finished that. The third go was way to easy then, because my ship was absolutely overpowered. Killing the final boss took somewhat like 2 seconds. I'm really wondering how the difficulty ramps up in the full version... right now I don't have a clue.

Sometimes the music just stopped and continued after some seconds.

I just looked into the game.ini... REMCON, WS_1 to WS_5, ROTARY_PLUS, ROTARY_MINUS... hmm... seems like I've overseen something.

[mkovacic]

The game is awesome. Very hard, too. The mouse controls didn't work for me though, I can only move the ship in huge discrete steps when using the mouse.

I'd probably buy it if I didn't discover Steel Saviour on the same day as your game, now it's the choice between the two.

[z3lda]

I was unable to download as well. Same issue as Dan.

[Nemesis]

Hey I've seen those graphics a long while back and I kept saying to myself what a pity it was that there's no game code to give them life. And now my wish has come true! Oh boy I love shmups.. one of my favourite game genres!I haven't played it yet but I'm dowloading as I write this...

[oNyx]

[...]Beat the final boss... and then that level again? The second go was much harder, but I also finished that.[...]

The second go isn't harder usually. I just spend to much money on the engines, because the mouse control felt to restricted. (It's imo much easier with the cursor keys)

[Anthony Flack]

It keeps timing out for me too. You really need to host this somewhere better.

[Midnight Synergy]

Downloaded last night, zipped out my Credit Card tonight. Haven't had a chance to download the full version yet, so all comments are on the demo version.

Very nice! Not perfect, but very nice!

Total 80s chip music, dudes! Reminded me of playing Zynapse on my Atari ST. And that's a good thing!

Great particle engine. Amazing amount of detail. Fun to play.

Allright, obviously I bought it, so what are the drawbacks (that you might scare other potential customers off with)?

1. The shop/mission interface is clunky. You get used to it, but at first you have no idea what to do.

2. The first level boss is kinda lame, and has been done a billion times before. I hope the other boss monsters are more inspired, you certainly have the technique to pull it off.

3. The difficulty level is very uneven. Buy the wrong weapons, and you're dead in the water. Upgrade enough and the level is dead easy (by the third go my Flamethrower was so powerful I didn't even see any enemies on screen anymore - they blew up before even entering, including 2/3 of the boss. Got me over 3 million credits - I'm scared to think what I'll be able to buy in the full version). Hopefully that is not the way the full version progresses, but even if not, you might want to change that - it obviously concerned some others on this board.

4. The RailGun enemy seems kinda unfair... you don't really know what's happening, and boom, you're dead.

That's it... I might have more comments after playing the full version a bit. Probably not today/tonight though.

There's been some very oppulent horizontal PC shooters out this year, this game, Dovez, and Steel Saviour. Dovez is neat (and I love the music) - might just "have to" buy that as well. Steel Saviour wasn't quite my cup'o'tea, although it is beautiful to look at! Glad to see that scene is alive and (hopefully) well.

Cheers,
Patrick

[tolik]

Complete the first campaign 5 times. Having real fun with all the upgrades and 13000000 scores
Going to buy it instead of Super Elvis which has OpenGL...

[tolik]

Bought it!

[Nemesis]

Is it just me or is the game impossibly hard? My best try was when I pumped all the upgrades into a front gun but even them I seldom got past the first missile gun and never past the tracked missile tank!

Something I'm missing?

[patrox]

Is it just me or is the game impossibly hard? My best try was when I pumped all the upgrades into a front gun but even them I seldom got past the first missile gun and never past the tracked missile tank!

Something I'm missing?

Yeah it's impossible, put it on easy

Or sell you first weapon and buy the razor gun, it's easier that way.


pat.

[GrahamGoring]

Going to buy it instead of Super Elvis which has OpenGL...

Rub his face in it why don't you?

Oh, I should point out that BMT refunded the extra CD cost to me as the game is shipped by the developer - ie, don't check that CD option for heaven's sake if you order the CD version. Still had to pay VAT but I can't really blame the developers for that now... Or can I?!

[tolik]

Yeah, same problem. Payed the VAT but the CD version from BMT/RegNow is not the one which is referred on site.

I've finished this amazing game. "Is this the end...?"

It stands up with the promised Tyrian, R-Type and other games very perfectly. I see a lot of Atari stuff here (especially the hardkore muzak!). I wonder if creators were also inspired by some Extirpator enemies

I'm very excited to complete it again on higher level difficulty.

And it's really much longer than 110 minutes.

[RedKnight]

With all those "EXCELLENT" shmup games around,
it seems like it's going to be very hard to come up with one shmup game.

Feel like were on the coming second golden age of SHMUP.

[tolik]

Second Golden Age of SHMUPs passed with Dreamcast.
This console had all the games from Naomi, Sega arcade based systems.
(http://www.system16.com)

[Dan MacDonald]

It was nice to see Ikaruga come out on the GC though...