[Wall Girl] New version available, now with Easy mode
In response to many comments, I spent a few hours to improve Wall Girl and have released the results.
http://haitaka.googlepages.com/Wall_Girl_PR1.zip
Edit: If you have yet to rate Wall Girl, the older version is available at:
http://www.ludumdare.com/compo/2009/04/19/wall-girl-final/
If you intend to rate the game, please do so before playing the new PR1 version.
Changes:
- Most of my respondents observed that the game was too hard for them. In response, this new version comes with an Easy mode. Press X at the title screen to start Easy mode.
- The Normal mode has seen several balance changes. On the whole, the game is easier, but a couple of parts have actually been made more difficult.
- There is now music! Still no sound effects, though. I was really bummed that I couldn’t finish the music in time for the entry, but here it is. Not great, but it’s my first shot (in a very long while) at composing something from scratch.
- Several cosmetic enhancements have been made to the boss fight.
- This version has a readme! 
It’s actually more like a full-on manual…
I think this is really very close to how I envisioned the game when I first started work on it, apart from the lack of a tutorial mode. If you have a bit of time to spare, reviews and/or comments would be appreciated.
hey, nice work! i enjoyed it in easy mode…
it’s probably a bit too easy, but it’s definitely more enjoyable like that than before. the music helps a lot too. nice, kind of brave melody… the loop is maybe a bit short, but adds a lot to the energy of the game. – sound effects and maybe more skill demanding attacks/systems (i don’t mean totally overhelming bullet hell by that) could make it even more fun. but feels quit ecomplete with the end boss… fist i thought it would be open ended, but the final fight gives it good feeling of “accomplishment”.
@weapons: the laser weapon was not of too much use in my experience, too weak?, on the other hand, the rockets were maybe a bit too strong…
for the graphics i had, like others also said, the impression that the lowres 3d background, the alpha blended smooth shapes of the bullets/wall and the handdrawn look of the figures makes it a bit fall apart visually, but really, it’s not that grave. in motion it looks nice… small adjustments of the background graphics (blur, higher resolution, desaturation?), some anti-alias on the enemy/player sprites, and things would already match better, i guessed…
and by the way, i’m always impressed by developers who want to master all parts of the game making, code, design, graphics and music/sound… really motiviating!
Hmm, the laser requires precise aiming. On higher difficulty modes it is extremely useful, especially if you are aiming to finish the Rush (where the missiles tend to get decoyed by the Greater Homunculi) or defeat Dragon’s Trap without bombing. The missiles, on the other hand, are very powerful but also utterly worthless vs. Avalanche Chime. Will look into balancing them – thanks for the feedback. I expect that if I make Easy mode a little bit harder, the missiles would become less useful and the laser more so.
I’m going to do a [much] more comprehensive update… sometime. This is kind of a stopgap so that people who had trouble initially can at least finish the whole thing.
Thanks for playing!
Playing this version, I managed to get a lot farther in normal mode =). My biggest feeling is that it should be more boss, fewer enemies, since the boss patterns make for more interesting evasion.
Good job!
I like boss patterns too, but they tend to be more time-consuming to make, and tend to require more extensive code tricks (e.g. bullets that can change direction). Also, getting all of them to fit a theme is kind of hard.