Gun Trails

Released on 2023-07-18
Made by Yoyogi Games
Download: Catalog
84.0MB

Gameplay

Gun Trails is a Shoot 'em up, faced paced game that has you dodging enemy aircraft as you try your best to avoid their rain of bullets. The game features one stage to beat but you only have a total of four hits.

Your ships hitbox is only in the cockpit. when that gets hit you loose one stock. This is a common design in danmaku / bullet hell games, made popular in the early 2000s by developers like CAVE.

The game also features a highscore board.

Controls

D-Pad - The D-Pad is used to move your ship across the screen. The player is able to move their ship anywhere on the screen.
A-button - The A-button is your primary fire and is used to shoot at the enemies. It can be held down for continuous firing and you move at the same speed while doing so.
B-button - The B-button is your secondary fire and is used to shoot a large beam at enemies that can be held down once you have destroyed 9 enemies in a row without being hit.

Accessiblity

In the options menu accessed by hitting the Playdates menu button there are options related to accessibility

• Skip Intro - Allows you to skip the intro cutscene of the game
• Screen Shake - Removes screen shake from the game
• Low SFX - Don't emit high pitched SFX (added in v1.2)
• Novice Mode - Reduces enemy pressure, nerfs bosses (added in v1.2)
• Slow ship - Slows the base speed of the ship

The other options unrelated to Accessibility are

• Voice Over
• Debug Logs
• Streamer Mode - Allows the game to be played in mirror mode on a computer.

Awards

Gun Trails was nominated for seven awards in the 2023 community awards:

• Presentation
  • Best Soundtrack
  • Best Sound Design
  • Artistic Visual Achievement Award in an SDK Game

• Technical
  • Outstanding Technical Achievement in an SDK Game

• General
  • Best Action Game
  • Best Arcade Game,
  • 2023 Playdate Game of the Year.

Updates

1.2: Novice Mode, Loader Improvement, and Bug Fixes New features

• Novice mode added! (can be enabled via main menu > options > novice mode). This adds a much gentler mode which reduces pressure on the player, as well as reducing base difficulty of some of the tougher bosses (manta ray + octopus).
• TLB's dedicated music track added.

Improvements

• Loading is now instant (was 30-50 seconds previously)
• Directional bullets now have a more accurately drawn rotation relative to their physical trajectory.
• Menu card cleanly animates when selected now, removing jutter.
• Add a min-sfx option, allowing players with sensitive hearing to disable certain sound effects they found troubling.
• Add a ship speed option which allows a slower base speed for players who prefer that.

Misc

• Score values bumped to allow player expansion past exploited v1.1 meta.

Bug fixes

• Fixes a scoring exploit top players found by spamming b while shooting with a.
• Fixes a screenshake bug that would persist if the player restarted during the shake which occurs upon being hit.

1.1: Mostly Bug Fixes Bug fixes

• Fixes some low-entering bullets in the final TLB pattern
• Fixes TLB death sprite cutting off
• Fixes level 3 Boss death sprite cutting off
• Fixes ranking page presentation to accommodate larger scores
• Wide laser doesn't get clipped on the left side anymore.
• Ship movement no longer slightly clipped on the right side.
• Fixed rare crash encountered by score-chaser players.
• No-miss bonuses are per level now (e.g. if you get hit level 1, but no miss level 2, you should now get the no miss bonus for level 2's post level screen)
• TLB (True Last Boss) is now accessible, previous a simple bug prevented the TLB from appearing.
• Coins now have lower draw priority than bullets, this avoids frustrating situations where coins would obscure a bullet, particularly after the midboss, and you get popped.

Other behavior changes

• Wide laser has a larger hitbox
• Wide laser doesnt remove its collider on impact any longer, so its more powerful for ripping through small enemy packs meter build up is reduced to account for the newly upgraded wide laser. midboss can no longer be cheesed by going up into center.

Scoring Changes

• Bonus for beating midbosses (10k x health left %)
• Bonus for beating bigboss (30k x health left %)
• Base hit values are upped to (15/30/60) for (small/med/large) enemies (old was 1/2/4)
• Per-level nomiss bonus (40k)
• Shield bashes are now worth 1000/2000/3000 (small/med/large enemies) (old was 500/1000/1500).
• Post game shard total bonus (num shards x 100)
• Nomiss bonus (250k) or just beating bonus (125k)

Other Links

Gun Trails Original Soundtrack (Bandcamp)
Art Prints and Stickers (Redbubble)
Official Twitter
Official Website