I know we never set a date for Shin Sophstar, because I wanted to be *sure* we would be able to deliver the game in a date before setting one, and not rush anything. We were aiming for Feb 27. We are now aiming for May 27. Nothing is set in stone yet.

I'm not a big fan of Cave shmups - no hate though, I do like them, but I prefer Raizing and Psikyo games. But they were masters at getting a great sense of flow during their levels.

I'm thinking about having a separate volume control for explosions in Shin Sophstar so you can hear explosions louder than the rest of the SFX if you want so. I enjoy louder explosions but I'm not sure everyone does. (And explosions sound different from the original Sophstar)

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A vertical arcade shoot'em up with an inventive teleport system, lots of fast-blazing action and explosions, tons of boss fights, a risk/reward based score system and a proper challenge for both veter...

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A new reworked midboss from Shin Sophstar. Hope this one looks easier than the last we posted, hehe :)

Ok, first small video of Shin Sophstar in a while. This is all work in progress. Does this look too hard?

Didn't give a LOT of thought, but yeah, now I'm in the trend. There was no Castle Excellent there, so I picked The Castle, and also no Another World so.. Out Of This World. Not my fav games, but I guess the ones that impacted me the most.

Damn, right now Shin Sophstar has 60 enemy types not counting bosses / midbosses Funny how we are making shorter levels but with more enemy types.

FIRST

The "You control the buttons you press" discourse should be "This game gives you a bunch of resources and you can choose which ones you use or not, giving you different experiences". Which I'm really ok with. Not "drop the control and the game plays itself". This is horrible.

Shin Sophstar has a replay system. I am right now coding a system where if for some reason uploading a score to the online leaderboard fails, you can do it through the replay saved. The game will save the best 10 scoring replays, but you can lock replays to not be overwritten.

I'm thinking about add 1 point to the score everytime you use a continue in Shin Sophstar, so the score reflects you used one continue. 2nd place here obviously used a continue but there's nothing reflecting that.

More boring screens from Shin Sophstar. I should start posting gifs.

Not the most exciting screenshot ever, but we also need to work on boring things sometimes.

I offered keys from our games to people who said "No, I want to support you guys and buy the game." I've been offered keys from devs where I said the same and they replied "The fuck you will buy it, TAKE THIS KEY RIGHT NOW". I never know what to do, hehe

When we made Sophstar, the idea was to have a super easy mode which anyone could beat, and one so ridiculous hard no one would even try. Stupid idea to call the first one "child" (I believe Steam wouldn't even accept this anymore), and stupid idea to think no one would try it.

Damn man

I wish we could have just a "SPANISH" and "PORTUGUESE" option when updating a game page on Steam, instead of having to updating "Spanish - Latin America"/"Spanish - Spain" and "Portuguese-Brazil"/"Portuguese-Portugal" if you are writing the exact same thing on both,

It may be silly, but I usually try to avoid the word "kill" regarding videogames if you are not explicitly killing creatures. So in a shmup you "destroy enemies", you don't "kill enemies". I think this started at some point when I wanted to convince people videogames aren't about mindless violence

How do we get more followers here? Any tips or suggestions?

In Sophstar, we had two speed buttons: one very slow, one at half speed. The idea was that players should use one and ignore the other, but people found it confusing. So in Shin Sophstar, there’s just one now. (Right now coding input systems for the replay system, heh)

We are telling Soph's story properly on Shin Sophstar. I know it's a shmup and no one cares about the plot. But still, hope people enjoy it :)

With Yellow Nina on Shin Sophstar, when you teleport and leave the ghost drone behind, both the main ship and the ghost shoots - And both can collect medals; (Maybe I should start making some gifs)

With the Rigby ships on Shin Sophstar, you can now use the super beetles a lot more often (If you hold button to use them as shield your special bar will deplete very quickly) They can also pick medals for you :D

I have a theory (maybe wrong?) In a shmup you're moving a hitbox. The avatar around it is just to tell you where the hitbox is. That's why, in principle, the only thing that should alter the hitbox position is player input, and animations shouldn't change this position.

If you optimize scoring in the 1st stage of Shin Sophstar, you will spawn more enemies, which may lead to better score, which can spawn even more enemies. It may get really hectic if you play it properly, and I am wondering if I should tune it down a bit. Random options screen:

Tracking a new found bug in Sophstar. Strange now to play a game with Reyka, Nina, Katha etc and choosing only 1 ship at the start, heh

Testing Shin Sophstar with the MSX 1 filter. I really like those colors. Of course the game gfx weren't optmized to make proper use of this palette, but it could make some gorgeous gfx when well used. Maybe I could try to polish the filter to make better use of the game gfx.

Working on Shin Sophstar cutscenes. Gonna change the title to Metal Shin Sophstar Solid.

I really think Shin Sophstar is shaping up to be a very, very good game. There are right now 30 playable ship types. And yes, they are very different between each other, with very specific strategies for each type. We keep refining each type so they are fun to play with.