Badz's BHA2 Judging: 東方闉塔得 ～ Ashes of Jeweled Treasures by Ryann The final score is out of 25, split as follows: Gameplay: 15 points How well the script plays. Each pattern is judged individually. The individual scores are further split as 5/15 for concept and 10/15 for gameplay. Creativity and theme: 5 points How well the script uses the contest theme. Based on having a fitting pair of characters, and making good use of both of them. Aesthetics and presentation: 5 points How good the script looks and feels. Includes visuals, as well as other presentation aspects like sound effects and the system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Creativity and theme: 2.5/5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is definitely creative, and there's a story to it, but it just doesn't make sense to me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Aesthetics and presentation: 2/5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The switching frames are nice, and it's nice to have a custom Seiga portrait... But this also has several instances where the visuals interfere with gameplay (mostly bright backgrounds with ADD bullets), and the negatives outweigh the positives in this case. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gameplay: 8.3/15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- Nonspell 1 7/15 (2/5 | 5/10) It's just random chaos with lasers everywhere. I'm really not a fan of Seiga's thinning lasers. It reduces their visibility and doesn't look very good. -------------------------------------------------- Spell 1: Rosary Sign "Esse Hawser" 10/15 (3/5 | 7/10) Shou's lasers are very uncomfortable with how low on the screen they curve, but besides that, it's a decent pattern. -------------------------------------------------- Nonspell 2 8/15 (2/5 | 6/10) The dodging itself is okay, but I have no idea why Shou would be chasing me around like this. -------------------------------------------------- Spell 2: Castaway Penumbra "Cloud Oscillation Paradigm" 7/15 (2/5 | 5/10) The dark negative filter looks cool, but it also hinders visibility. And it's even worse with those vision-obscuring rectangles. The danmaku itself seems okay, though I'm not a fan of Seiga's random bullet lines. -------------------------------------------------- Nonspell 3 11/15 (3.5/5 | 7.5/10) A little strange, maybe, but it's a solid pattern. -------------------------------------------------- Spell 3: Memorial Card "Capricious Avifauna Burial" 11.5/15 (4/5 | 7.5/10) Solid enough, and feels like a follow-up to the previous nonspell. -------------------------------------------------- Spell 4: Abhorrent Torrent "Insidious Sputter" 6/15 (3/5 | 3/10) The premise is interesting, but there are some problems with the execution. Let's split it by phase: -The intro takes entirely too long. The bubbles could be deployed way faster while still giving the player time to get in a gap. -Phase 1 is the most solid one- the danmaku is clearly visible, and it occasionally requires dodging on both axes of the bubble grid. I'm not a fan of how low on screen the bullets can spawn, though. -Phase 2 introduces ADD-blended bullets, and that's a problem: they blend in with the bubbles (though they're still relatively easy to track here). The random falling positions could also make them wall. -Phase 3's falling lasers, meanwhile, are easy to miss and can lead to cheap deaths. -The bubbles splitting and going after the player is fine once you know what's going to happen, but the charge effects don't telegraph it well in the slightest. -Then the last two segments of the spell are just standard dodging. They're not BAD, but they feel disconnected from the rest of it. -And why is the timer so much longer than it needs to be? -------------------------------------------------- Spell 5A: Eastern Impermanence "Fandangle Lullaby" (Protocol 1) 7/15 (3/5 | 4/10) It's *mostly* fine, except for Seiga's bullets that can occasionally snipe the player at extreme speeds. Shou's big laser wave is also kind of unreasonable to dodge. And why is this a survival? I don't see any reason for it to be. This applies to all three variants. -------------------------------------------------- Spell 5B: Eastern Impermanence "Fandangle Lullaby" (Protocol 2) 6/15 (3/5 | 3/10) This WOULD be a good pattern if it weren't for Shou's bullets being way too fast to dodge. What on earth is up with that? -------------------------------------------------- Spell 5C: Eastern Impermanence "Fandangle Lullaby" (Protocol 3) 9.5/15 (3.5/5 | 6/10) This is the most coherent variant of this spell. It's easy to get sniped by a red laser, but otherwise, the gameplay makes sense. -------------------------------------------------- Spell 6: Tropical Country "Lusophone Freightage" 8/15 (4/5 | 4/10) The danmaku in itself is fine, and I don't mind this whole "recording of Zino's entry as the background" concept, but the background is way too bright to be dodging ADD-blended lasers on. This would've been a lot better if it had used a different spell, or even simply darkened the background. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Final score: 13.3/25 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Closing notes ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -I actually like this "LuaSTG Randomizer" idea. But why did it have to be in a script where stages don't matter for judging? I'm very glad that spell practice is included, because judging this would've been incredibly annoying otherwise. -Overall, this was a really weird script with a lot of concepts I didn't quite get, but with good enough execution, I think you could make something very interesting out of it.