Shiny Luminous shooting

1. Core game idea
2. Spell card ideas
3. Game design considerations
4. Link to original GBA game fight
5. Needed assets checklist
6. Assets details
7. Music
8. Sound effects
9. Potentially useful external assets

1 Core game idea

Scoring-focused single stage STG
Player can spawn more enemies by standing in front of mirrors (which will continuously spit out enemies when player is facing it)
Touhou-style boss fight against "Shady Luminous"

2 Spell card ideas

Mirror themed spell cards. Can be based on:

Boss spawn clones of itself to attack from multiple directions (plenty of examples from Touhou, like Parsee, Aunn, Reisen in Lensed Night Sky)
Boss mirrors player inputs or screen (Seija like. Probably not)
Boss copies player inputs (player moves left, boss moves right etc)
Bullets "reflect", either at edge of screen or something like Kyouko's spell cards?
Dark version of player attacks
Boss spawns shadow enemies (could be useful if score system is based on chaining etc)

3 Game design considerations

Since mirror-spawned enemies are the same size as player character (meaning they are small-ish) Player shot should be relatively wide to make them easier to hit.
Needs to be some risk-vs-reward with spawning many shadows. Normal shot should probably not pierce enemies (but special attack could to make it feel powerful by utterly destroying groups of shadows - need some balancing to not make it spammable) To make shadows more dangerous in numbers, could have so that they cannot overlap and thus naturally spread over the screen as more are spawned. … or have them do something dangerous if not killed quickly enough … or just make it hard to stay in front of a mirror for long and thus make it hard to spawn many shadows Getting this right will make or break the stage section of the game.
How quickly does a mirror spawn enemies? Instantly when the player walks in front of it would make it easy to accidentally spawn shadows during normal dodging (not a big deal if shadows wait a bit before attacking, and maybe not a bad thing even if they do) Can add some delay if we want to remove accidents.

4 Link to original GBA game fight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmFRMHXCXfg&t=2317

5 Needed assets checklist

In order of priority. Low priority items have external assets that can be easily used so they don't need assets made exclusively for this game. Assets where no good external assets exist are in bold, and represent the minimum amount of unique assets needed. Note that while the player special attack is high-ish priority, game design details about it need to be finalized so wait a little bit with it. See the next section for details.h

player sprite
shadow luminous sprite (both a "shady luminous" and "black" version for boss and stage enemies.) will be facing the camera unlike the player sprite so we cannot fully reuse them for player, although it might be nice to have a Shiny Luminous version for things like victory animations where she turns towards the camera.)
regular enemy. stage design will very likely need some kind of regular weak enemy that spawns regardless of if the player stays in front of a mirror, to apply pressure by providing a regular stream of aimed bullets. Could maybe be based on the stage 4-3 attraction enemies from the GBA game? Or whatever you feel like would fit.,
stronger enemy - Something to provide more complicated bullet patterns and that the player may want to spend resources to kill quickly
player special attack (clears bullets. should interact with the score system. details need to be worked out),
mirror sprite. normal and broken version. spawns enemies. can maybe be broken only by special attacks(?), or by regular attacks(?). depends on score system (the player may not want to break the mirrors if they can farm black luminouses for points, and making it immune to regular attacks would prevent players accidentally breaking it),
background. One infinitely repeating vertically scrolling background should be good.,
player projectiles there are various free-to-use Touhou-style projectiles online we could use for this, but you could also make some of your own if you want to.
enemy projectiles. there are various free-to-use Touhou-style projectiles online we could use for this, but you could also make some of your own if you want to.
Character portrait(s)? Not sure if needed. if we want dialog.
Title screen (can reuse assets)
Victory screen (can reuse assets)
Game over screen (can and probably should reuse assets)
Hi scores screen (can and probably should reuse assets)

6 Assets details

6.1 Player sprite

Should be seen from behind like in a Touhou game or most vertically scrolling shmups

Figure 1: minimal player character sprite for a mostly symmetric character (so left-right turns can be mirrored). Has "idle" animation by switching between frame 1 and frame 2. Has animation for turning left/right by going from frame 2 and frame 3 and staying on frame 3. (sprite is flipped horizontally when going left.)

Figure 2: more maximal character sprite. Forward (idle) animation. Animations for going left/right and a respawn/death animation.

6.2 Background

Should scroll vertically and loop nicely. Need to have high contrast with enemies and enemy bullets. Can probably make it gold/yellow like the walls in the original GBA fight. Might need a shift in perspective compared to the original game, as the "camera" is behind the character and thus the background is the "floor" and not the "wall". Want some slight clutter to make it not loop too often. The image below provides an example of that, although it's the wrong colors and we probably don't want skulls?

Figure 3: background suitable for vertical scrolling with some skulls to break symmetry

Aesthetics: The original GBA game fight takes place in a Zakkena-possessed hall of mirrors in an amusement park. It's in World 4 which is the horror-themed part of the amusement park, although the hall of mirrors itself doesn't look very scary. I don't think we need to mimic the GBA game stage too closely, but one aspect of the original fight I really like is how sparkly and gold it is. It doesn't look evil, it looks almost "holy". It reminds me of Evil King's line about darkness and light being two sides of the same coin: Shiny Luminous's most dangerous enemy is born from light (reflection in the mirror).

6.3 Mirror spawned enemy

Should be a black version of Shiny Luminous. Should have good contrast with background. Might need idle animation, left/right animation and death animation. Animations can be pretty minimal (might not even need more than 1 frame, so just switching between static images - can make it look like they fly by moving the sprites up/down in code). Death animation can be done by just flashing them white and fading out the sprite, or it can be a static "I got hurt" frame, see below. NOTE: perspective is different from the GBA game, since our game scrolls vertically. We want the enemy viewed from the front not the side, see figure 4 for an example.

Figure 4: example single-frame enemy "idle" animation. Animated by moving sprite up-down in-game.

Figure 5: example "I got hurt" frame

6.4 Boss

Like the mirror spawned enemy but "Shady Luminous" color.

6.5 Normal stage enemy

Flies in and fires some simple bullets and stays around for a while. Probably just need an idle animation (1 or 2 frames). Should not look strong because they aren't. Possible designs: enemies from world 4 of the GBA game that would work are:

Bats
Wisps
Ghosts
Cloud enemy from the 4-3 attraction

But it could also not be horror themed since the hall of mirrors doesn't look very horror. My favorites are probably wisps since they look kind of "holy" and thus fit nicely with the mirrors. Might be nice to have different colored versions that fire different patterns. (Or different versions)

mpv-precure_GBA_TAS.mkv-00-28-07-183.png

Figure 6: 4-3 attraction enemies (clouds). NOTE: perspective is different from what is needed for our game, since the GBA game scrolls horizontally. We want the enemy viewed from the front not the side. See Fig. 4

Figure 7: Bat. NOTE: perspective is different from what is needed for our game, since the GBA game scrolls horizontally. We want the enemy viewed from the front not the side. See Fig. 4

Figure 8: wisps and ghosts (4-2 attraction enemies). NOTE: perspective is different from what is needed for our game, since the GBA game scrolls horizontally. We want the enemy viewed from the front not the side. See Fig. 4

6.6 Dangerous stage enemy

May not be needed, but likely will be needed to add variety to the stage. Does also not need more than like 2 frames of idle animation since they mostly linger on screen and fire bullet patterns, but should look more dangerous (and be bigger) than the regular stage enemies. If not used for the basic enemy, the following should work:

Ghosts
Cloud enemy from the 4-3 attraction

Might be nice to have different colored versions that fire different patterns.

6.7 EXTERNAL Enemy bullets

Should have good contrast with background and look evil shadowy. Purple is a very popular color for enemy bullets and would work nicely against a yellow background. We probably want several bullet shapes. I have a whole bunch of good bullet sprites that are free to use so you may not need to draw these.

6.8 EXTERNAL Player bullets

Does not need to have that good contrast against BG and are generally drawn behind enemy bullets to not visually clutter things. So can probably still be yellow even if the background is yellow, as long as they are different shades and can be seen when focused on but easily filtered out when dodging. Can use existing bullet sprites and just make them a subtle color.

6.9 WAIT Player special attack/bomb

Details pending. Need to work out the gameplay system to figure out what works. Will probably clear bullets from screen, but if it's meant to hurt mirrors, it probably cannot be a beam attack, but if not, it can be a beam attack.

6.10 Mirror sprite

Needs to be bigger than player sprite so the player sprite can appear reflected in it (I will do the reflection in code). Probably at least twice the size of the player including the frame of the mirror. Might need an animation where it breaks and I'll probably make it flash when it spawns an enemy (I can do the flash in code)

6.11 WAIT walls

Will probably not need walls if we just design stage enemy spawn positions and bullet patterns to force the player to move around.

6.12 WAIT Character portraits

Maybe not needed, if we don't have any dialog. But we could easily add some dialog between Shiny and Shady Luminous about light and dark being two sides of the same coin etc. Should probably face slighty to the left/right so we can have the two versions (shady and shiny) face each other when they speak. Only do portraits if you feel like it and can reuse them for things like title screens etc, we can easily cut any and all dialog.

6.13 Title screen

Not really needed. I can just slap some nice fonts on some background made from other art. Still nice to have to give good first impression. Can reuse portrai art etc.

6.14 Victory screen

Some art of Shiny Luminous or Hikari being happy. Nice to have to make the player feel rewarded for beating the game.

6.15 Game over sreen

Can easily just be fonts on black background or reused art/sprites. Not worth doing unique art for IMO

6.16 High score screen

Will mostly just be scores with some background art. Can easily be reused art/sprites. Not worth doing unique art for IMO

6.17 EXTERNAL Score item(s)

Items dropped by enemies and cancelled bullets. I can easily get external assets for this, or mimic the small health pick-ups in the GBA game.

7 Music

I will ask mojo. He is very reliable (but not into precure as far as I know). Would be nice to have an instrumental remix of Danzen! Futari wa precure since that's the most iconic theme. Maybe a differetn song for the boss fight that sounds a bit more scary? Will listen to the soundtrack for ideas (Shining Star and Heart to Heart are also quite good songs.) Worse case, I can look up sheet music and do something retro-game sounding in beatbox.

8 Sound effects

There are a ton of sound effects with permissive licenses. I have a good collection I can use.

9 Potentially useful external assets

All with permissive licenses