Shadow Wizard Bullet Heaven, With Friendly Fire?? - The Spell Brigade

Try The Spell Brigade on Steam: store.steampow...
The Spell Brigade is an online co-op survivors-like for 1-4 players. Team up with your wizard friends to slay hordes of dark creatures. Complete team-based objectives, unlock new upgrades and create overpowered spell synergies. Friend nor foe is safe in this friendly fire bullet hell!
_____________________________________________________________________
Check out my Video Essay & Review channel: / wanderbotprime
Join my discord: / discord
Support me on Patreon: / wanderbot
My Twitter: / wanderbots

[@anthonyjackson4840]

SHADOW WIZARD MONEY GANG We love casting spells!

[@DarkWolf22K]

_🖖🏿 Shadow 🤟🏿 Wizard 🤘🏿 Money 🤙🏿 Gang_ _Legalize _*_☢️Nuclear☢️-_*_ 💥_

[@sweskey]

Always felt that the 8/16 bit ascetic was common for Vampire Survivor clones not because of cargo cult following but because of cheaper (or quicker to draw; Can't go around presuming everyone is buying) assets and ease of programming.

[@snegglepuss6669]

The big reasons for pixel art in bullet heavens or horde survivals is one, it's cheaper, and two, you can make bigger hordes on weaker machines. So if you aren't programming gods, a pixel art game is easier to fit onto the Switch, which is an option you absolutely want to leave open

[@BuzMcNugget5]

Im sure Wander says something about this during the video but looks very magicka

[@adtrlthegamer7449]

That's what I was thinking too.

[@deetlebee]

I'm impressed how different it looks compared to when we played it a few weeks ago, they are definitely updating fast. I agree with Wander here though that it needs a lot more work to get there. It was a blast playing 4-player because the chaos of friendly fire is real.

[@WizardofWestmarch]

I suspect a lot of bullet heaven games are pixel art because rendering a lot of sprites, especially if you can keep it to one/a couple sprite sheets for all of them, is much less computer/gpu power than rending all those enemies with vertices/shaders/etc

[@benjaminmiddaugh2729]

You can do sprites without being pixel art style.

[@AtikinKnight]

Not only it is lighter on the CPU, it is also easier to make decent looking even if the dev is not an artist.

[@Pudassassin]

On the comment about "following the successor", I was reminded of how PUBG bring forth the battle royale trends that also cause Fortnite to change direction WAY away from original promise, or when Stardew Valley come that game markets get over-saturated with farm-sim games. Inspiration is good but that has dark side too if all they do is just try to cash in rather than making unique and good games. 😅 PS: "Not going to experience friendly-fire today--" get hit by your very own spell! I'm sure that will be even more hilarious with friends XD

[@pietersmit5148]

Still salty about Fortnite changing what the game was meant to be, especially the amazing AI tech they developed specifically for handling mass amounts of unit pathing.

[@Necro2Mutou]

in response to the 'there was a predecessor' at 43:26 roughly, there was a couple before it that were similar enough, the one I know of being Crimsonland. It wasn't very huge, and was more niche. It didn't have the leveling system and instead had just random weapons and pickups that spawned in the level, which expanded as you got further in. It's about as close as you can get to a predecessor, as it was the first I'm aware of that matches the gameplay.

[@sweskey]

Crimsonland, Geometry Wars, can go all the way back to Robotron 2084 and Smash TV if you want to. Always felt that manual aiming brought these games back to twin stick shooters even when the sticks have been replaced with WASD and mouse.

[@Necro2Mutou]

@@sweskey That's fair. In terms of twin stick shooters crimsonland is one of the earliest for sure. But I did a little more research after the comment, apparently the game that inspired vampire survivors more directly was a mobile game called magic survival, but I feel like without the oldest twin stick shooters we wouldn't have gotten vampire survivors or similar games.

[@natanoj16]

My favorite of the 'before Vampire Survivor' is 'Magic Survival' which doesnt have EXP drop, instead it is spread around the map encouraging exploration + chests with cool relics which modify specific spells and at some spell ranks it has 3-4 unique choices to mayorly change each spell :)

[@natanoj16]

​@@Necro2Mutouyea but they specifically arent Twin-sticks themself as you dont use the second stick at all. But the genre is absolutly an evolution from the twinstick

[@Necro2Mutou]

@@natanoj16 yeah, it's the predecessor of the genre is what I mean.

[@marcdel_]

re: pixel art. i can’t speak for anyone else, but i’m a career software engineer learning game dev and bullet heavens are relatively approachable in terms of mechanics, and pixel art also seems like the easiest entry point when you don’t have much experience. it’s totally also cargo culting, but that intersection is probably attractive to more experienced devs looking for a solo or duo project as well.

[@mkuehn5450]

25:26 "very easy to avoid, oops" i so appreciated that.

[@natanoj16]

Still my mind just goes to 'the oldest of the genre is still doing so much of what he describes' (the oldest I know is 'Magic Survival' which has the cool milestone upgrades where you have to pick between 3 different unique upgrades for each spell with 3 more different choices at higher spell levels)

[@maxdesade]

I would love it to have a Element-Combo/Fusion System like a Spell get first element at lvl 6 then at lvl 12 a second element and finally at lvl 18 these Elements Fusion to a new Element, like fire+fire=wildfire fire+water=steam and so on or a Combo system where Element Spells Combos with other Element Spells, similar to the Fusion but only one element per spell and if these spells overlap it would be the same effect like the fusion. If both system get in the game holy moly it will be pure chaos. Wfg Max (my english is not so good sry)

[@maxdesade]

20 mins later in the video, there is a fusion system 🤣

[@TheFluffiestZinogre]

In regards to the missions, I feel like if they wiped the creatures on the screen and gave you the EXP drops, it would feel more worthwile as well without having to give you something unique.

[@devontyler2504]

Interesting twist on the bullet heaven/hell genre where usually just building the max amount of AOE or status effects is the meta, now you have to worry about that AOE just killing you as well

[@shadowsonic4452]

Fine is also the way I would describe it, but in a sea of ok, fine, bad, good, and even a few amazing bullet heavens, fine isn’t going to cut it or stand out.

[@CaptAoife]

This looks fun and promise of co-op is intriguing. If they rebalance it some and add some new things they might have a winner.

[@itmekai]

Why do people always underestimate luck.. it's such a good investment.. any games that have lucks.. I love it, cuz irl I'm pretty lucky myself, sometimes I just click on a one free roll and got good skins in games

[@lgwkevin1]

The instinctive way i would move in a bullet heaven game is so different from Wander's that i'm getting goosebumps from discomfort when he moves in the exact opposite direction of how i assumed he would. hahaha...

[@trashfay]

Worth checking out the full version! Its much much better

[@tylerabdill2429]

given that the natives you speak of were people who saw advanced technology and couldn't have possibly understood it I'm not sure cargo cults exactly line up with how games copy each other a lot but the idea that you see something that works and also want that success is very likely a big part of it but I think another big factor is a feeling of "this is easy to make I could do it better!" and then finding out it's actually fairly difficult and ending up just making more of the same

[@zoltankalovics7910]

~35:00 you say you want more interesting rewards for the quests, and earlier you also said something about modifiers for the elements, so what do you think about the idea of combining the 2, and making the reward for the objectives some kind of element modifier?(before anyone makes any assumptions, no I am in no way involved in the development process, but from what I can see the devs do take feedback about this kind of thing, so we could recommend it)

[@SirRado]

A death must die series would be great!

[@wanderbots]

I have a solid ~20 videos on it so far, and will record more when it gets a major update. Or if I feel like playing more.

[@ronanhartman8942]

good on yopu for mainly covering bullet heavens that break away from the cargo cult in novel ways!

[@rakuloe]

Im almost done with getting 100% in Ragnarok: Nordic Ashes, but I think this will be my next one. I love these bullet hells with an own colorful style, instead of all the darkness and pixel art. Hopefully it stays nice as a singleplayer game, as they keep mentioning the co-op aspect.

[@natifox7745]

Love the graphics! Hope it'll be released sooooon❤️

[@Shadow86TheGamer]

That's a jawa looking for loot.

[@flakstoneforge2200]

Seems like not doing objectives increases boss health

[@chromaticblue3976]

Didn't do the math, but I think the armor upgrades are percentage based?

[@Chronx6]

One of the things with game design that you have always ask is 'why'. Why did a game do X? Why is X useful? Why should we use X? and so on. And I find a lot of designers don't ask why, they just do it because someone else did it.

[@100fifos]

Huh the demo on steam seems to be a different build than what Wander is playing. Different character selection UI but unfortunately no metaprogression. Or at least I didnt find any.

[@BoltBlasterGames]

This isn't the demo but an early preview build for content creators and the press. The demo will soon receive an update!

[@meyatetana2973]

LOL what does luck do.. what it does in every single game ever made, increases crit :P

[@SkankHunt42-h8d]

Pledge your soul to the Shadow god 🗣️

[@MaximumAxiom]

Is there any progression you like in roguelikes, if you're not a fan of stat increases?

[@wanderbots]

It varies. I like roguelites with extensive meta progression when it's a core focus of the game, IE: Rogue Legacy. But in games like these it's just an awkward soft difficulty curve that usually hurts the replay value at the endgame.

[@asp-ian]

this reminds me of MAGICKA

[@w1984t]

The constant skipping of Titans Fury was physically painful.

[@wanderbots]

If the bulk of my damage is from one singular weapon, it makes more sense to go all-in than get global damage buffs that aren't that meaningful + don't contribute to evolutions.

[@caseysailor9301]

SHADOW WIZARD MONEY GANG

[@AvanCade]

I get a negative sentiment from this video. Mainly talking about what is missing and what could be better. That is unfortunate.

[@supdude1878]

Tyftv

[@pmangano]

There is a good idea there but this looks so boring at the way it is now.

[@EmiIy7662]

It actually isn't 😊