Lily Accompaniment
Neat boss rush bullet hell game made during a game jam where have to aim and catch your projectile, breakout style, while avoiding enemy bullets. While it's possible that you could point to whatever game did this style first, the dual projectile options, specific hold and shoot input, and deep south style twang all culminate in a unique package worth trying out.
That's exactly the point I want to stress, this texturally detailed aqua imbued gameboy style sendback is worth trying. The specific dodge and weave is a style of combat I really respect and crave, one where you have to be mindful as much about your attacks as you are your evasiveness. You rarely see game design like that outside of your Punchouts and such. Most of the 'SHMUP's I play treat bullets as an infinite or simple 'cooldown' resource which just means lining yourself up with your assailtant and holding a button. This more angular fished approach and limited horizontal movment opportunity gives a real alternative worth appreciating.
That being said I have tapped the glorious red "Abandoned" button on here, indicating that I have no interest in beating it. That's being the 3rd (and probably final) crocodile fight, while may be doable, I cant and wont be able to surpass. Closest I can get is about half way before being overwhelmed by the shotgun bullet patterns. The idea of the fight is obvious to me and in theory I like it as a (probable) send off to the game. You have to tactically keep his appendages down (hands and tail), thus engaging in crowd control. The issue is they spawn back too quickly after being removed and his main shotgun attack is too sporadic and close to the players hitbox to be able to manuveur safely from. On top of this, there is also no I-frames for getting hit, or at least the window is so small you cant rely on it. So a single wave of bullets could clear you out regardless. While the first 2 bosses are a treat, the third is an exercise in trial and error at best, one that I think could have been avoided by pulling the boss further back from the player so the bullet patterns are more readable along with increasing IFrames. As it is, I wouldn't be suprised if almost nobody defeats this.
...I would usually just look up what to do for the part I'm stuck on but as far I can find no video evidence of this work exists. I think this is probably comparable to if you tried to play through something like Punchout before there were internet guides on the game. In that sense, it fits rather appropriately into the albeit thin narrative of Blue Bayou. Your protagonist in is being shook down by these massive aquatic mafiosos for their debts they owe, so you could read the immense difficulty spike as a tragedy in form. In the world of sharks and minnows, the minnows can only do but so much not to get swallowed whole. That is to say this is one of those games where you feel pretty okay not finishing it out. In this sense I think designers should give good thought to their failure states as a ludonarrative force: Some players may just never beat it, how do we invoke that in a way that feels appropriate? Blue Bayou indirectly reminds me that a special losing screen splash may be all the difference in imprinting this narrative of failure. In Fallout if you die, the narrator will comment on how you failed in a way that's poignant, almost as if to say 'this place is gnarly, theres no shame to be had that you didnt make it'. Similarly, in Punchout your character losing is the expected output. Asking if you want to retire or not. Boxer's retire all the time due to being outbested or no longer able to keep up. However these examples are far and few between. Most action games, including this one, both try to advise you and rope you back in as an infinite loop of play. Death is merely a setback that you should feel bad about. Even Dark Souls is guilty of this, throwing a "YOU DIED" text on screen which the player recieves only in embarrassment.
This is why I have felt the urge to warn yall about how the game is good, but you dont have to complete it. Having players offset the cost of giving each other this caution is a sore point not found merely in Blue Bayou but is an industry wide regression from throwing set backs at the player (life systems, limited save points, etc.). I think its no suprise most people get upset that they lose now in games, they have been trained to see it as a shameful loss of progress rather than a story of understandable limitations. I'm not trying to dig a heel into Blue Bayou here, moreso I am trying to illustrate that if you find yourself warning other players about a games difficulty then that may be a genuine ludonarrative dissonance worth unmasking in more depth. May that be the only weakness of this twangy pond, and let the crocodile king reign in the watery kingdom in the meantime, taking shade under the dock.
Neat boss rush bullet hell game made during a game jam where have to aim and catch your projectile, breakout style, while avoiding enemy bullets. While it's possible that you could point to whatever game did this style first, the dual projectile options, specific hold and shoot input, and deep south style twang all culminate in a unique package worth trying out.
That's exactly the point I want to stress, this texturally detailed aqua imbued gameboy style sendback is worth trying. The specific dodge and weave is a style of combat I really respect and crave, one where you have to be mindful as much about your attacks as you are your evasiveness. You rarely see game design like that outside of your Punchouts and such. Most of the 'SHMUP's I play treat bullets as an infinite or simple 'cooldown' resource which just means lining yourself up with your assailtant and holding a button. This more angular fished approach and limited horizontal movment opportunity gives a real alternative worth appreciating.
That being said I have tapped the glorious red "Abandoned" button on here, indicating that I have no interest in beating it. That's being the 3rd (and probably final) crocodile fight, while may be doable, I cant and wont be able to surpass. Closest I can get is about half way before being overwhelmed by the shotgun bullet patterns. The idea of the fight is obvious to me and in theory I like it as a (probable) send off to the game. You have to tactically keep his appendages down (hands and tail), thus engaging in crowd control. The issue is they spawn back too quickly after being removed and his main shotgun attack is too sporadic and close to the players hitbox to be able to manuveur safely from. On top of this, there is also no I-frames for getting hit, or at least the window is so small you cant rely on it. So a single wave of bullets could clear you out regardless. While the first 2 bosses are a treat, the third is an exercise in trial and error at best, one that I think could have been avoided by pulling the boss further back from the player so the bullet patterns are more readable along with increasing IFrames. As it is, I wouldn't be suprised if almost nobody defeats this.
...I would usually just look up what to do for the part I'm stuck on but as far I can find no video evidence of this work exists. I think this is probably comparable to if you tried to play through something like Punchout before there were internet guides on the game. In that sense, it fits rather appropriately into the albeit thin narrative of Blue Bayou. Your protagonist in is being shook down by these massive aquatic mafiosos for their debts they owe, so you could read the immense difficulty spike as a tragedy in form. In the world of sharks and minnows, the minnows can only do but so much not to get swallowed whole. That is to say this is one of those games where you feel pretty okay not finishing it out. In this sense I think designers should give good thought to their failure states as a ludonarrative force: Some players may just never beat it, how do we invoke that in a way that feels appropriate? Blue Bayou indirectly reminds me that a special losing screen splash may be all the difference in imprinting this narrative of failure. In Fallout if you die, the narrator will comment on how you failed in a way that's poignant, almost as if to say 'this place is gnarly, theres no shame to be had that you didnt make it'. Similarly, in Punchout your character losing is the expected output. Asking if you want to retire or not. Boxer's retire all the time due to being outbested or no longer able to keep up. However these examples are far and few between. Most action games, including this one, both try to advise you and rope you back in as an infinite loop of play. Death is merely a setback that you should feel bad about. Even Dark Souls is guilty of this, throwing a "YOU DIED" text on screen which the player recieves only in embarrassment.
This is why I have felt the urge to warn yall about how the game is good, but you dont have to complete it. Having players offset the cost of giving each other this caution is a sore point not found merely in Blue Bayou but is an industry wide regression from throwing set backs at the player (life systems, limited save points, etc.). I think its no suprise most people get upset that they lose now in games, they have been trained to see it as a shameful loss of progress rather than a story of understandable limitations. I'm not trying to dig a heel into Blue Bayou here, moreso I am trying to illustrate that if you find yourself warning other players about a games difficulty then that may be a genuine ludonarrative dissonance worth unmasking in more depth. May that be the only weakness of this twangy pond, and let the crocodile king reign in the watery kingdom in the meantime, taking shade under the dock.