Name: Colors of Damnation

Developer: Tw0Face and Razor_

Story: It's a shmup! A top down shooter in VX Ace in which you face color coded adversaries. A plague is ravaging worlds, turning people into color coded fiends. Go from world to world trying to find a way to put an end to the nightmare.



Writing: It's the kind of throwaway story you'd expect in a mindless shoot-em-up. You basically play an adventurer. You're rescued and recruited by aliens. They want you to save their worlds from this menace. Simple enough. The grammar is poor enough that the characters can be sometimes hard to understand. I didn't pay too much attention to it since this was shmup anyway and the story is just there for padding. One thing I will point out, though, is that the story artificially inserts friction between the two main characters to create unnecessary drama. It's pretty poorly executed. Still, if you're here for the story, you're obviously missing the point of the game, which is to shoot stuff.



Gameplay: A lot of fun, but not without it's flaws. There are three modes: Damnation, which follows the game's story arc, survival mode, where you have to kill constantly spawning enemies and beat your high score, and simulation mode, where you learn the ropes. You can shoot in eight directions, and unfortunately, you can't shoot again until the bullet hits its target. That only one bullet can be on the screen at a time probably has to do with the system's ability to repeat an event, but it is one of the noticeable examples of VX Ace's limitations.

As you kill enemies, you get credits. You have to collect the credits off of the map. Unfortunately, it's impossible to collect the last coin, because the session ends with the death of the last enemy, which is definitely a design flaw. It's really frustrating to kill the last enemy and know that you can't touch that last coin. There are power ups and debuffs on screen. Dynamite and crystals, which takes life, clocks, which take time away, bombs, which can be used against enemies (quite cumbersome and poorly effective), two types of stars, one of which stops enemies for five seconds, and another which briefly shields you from attack, a heart, which briefly converts damage to health restoration, various orbs, some of which slow you down, others of which speed you up, and multicolored ammunition.

First, the ammunition. There are four colors of enemies and four colors of ammunition. Use the same color ammunition against the like color enemies for the best effect. I recommend avoiding the bombs. You can't shoot until you use them, and they're basically worthless. It seems rather complicated, but in fact, once you play it, it's easy. Just run around, grab the ammo (it's infinite once you get it), and avoid running into anything that's going to hurt you. Switch between ammo depending on the enemy you're fighting. It's not hard at all, and your buttons are ASD, so they're right there in a row so that they're easy to remember.

After collecting credits, you can use them to buy various powerups, such as health increases for the levels.

Finally, there's a level editor, the first time I've heard of such a thing in VX Ace. You can choose your background, enemies, whether you play as Bronco or Elvira, and what kind of power ups you can find. I haven't tried it yet, but you unlock it by completing the simulator levels...or maybe you already have it and you unlock a bonus feature: I went to the simulator first, so I didn't actually check.

Graphics: Very nice. There's a little bit of RTP in here, but not much and most of the action is on parallax backgrounds. This is pretty strictly arena combat style, so don't expect to get lost.

Music: Plenty of fun techno styles of music. There are different, fast paced songs for different levels. It's the standard fare you'd expect from an action game.

Conclusion: A really fun way to waste your time. It's as passable as any top down arena shooter, and I see no reason why most people wouldn't enjoy it. There are some rather unfortunate issues that you have to deal with in the game, but they're not too hard to overlook. The game feels a little clumsy in places, but overall, succeeds in being a mindless shmup. The number of features alone crammed into a VX Ace game is surprising, but you start to understand how when you see how standard and simple the level design is.