Game Name: Ripple effect Genre Name: shooting action Service / Developer: Crest / Outsider Kids summary : ‘Ripple Effect’ is a TPS game that features cartoon-style graphics that remind you of animations from Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon. TPS when aiming, and quarter view when not aiming, avoiding the enemy’s bullets and making use of the fun of shooting and rolling.
Following BIC, ‘Ripple Effect’, which participated in G-Star, is a shooting game with a cartoon feel by adding a UI with bold lines to American cartoon characters. It is a work being developed by ‘Outsider Kids’, a 7-person indie team invested by Smilegate.
The beginning unfolds with the spaceship making an emergency landing, but this explanation may be a bit embarrassing because the cutscene ends and proceeds to a point close to the top view. However, following the first introduction, the shooting action between the unique TPS and quarter view unfolds right from the moment Rose practices combat using a drone before leaving the spaceship.
A somewhat peculiar thing is that the R key, which is usually pressed habitually in shooting games, was not reloaded. And it didn’t reload automatically when it ran out of ammunition. So, at first, I was taken aback following shooting all the time, but it was a structure that allowed me to reload only when I was not aiming. Also, since the right mouse click is the aim and non-aim switch, the zoom key was naturally moved to the middle mouse button.
I wanted to shoot all the enemies as soon as they appeared, so I would have wanted to use the aiming mode all the time, but in a way, the aiming mode moved slightly faster than zooming in and slowing down in a one-of-a-kind shooting game. So even if it was stuffy, I had no choice but to keep moving in non-aiming mode even when I was in aiming mode.
Perhaps the existing shooting is TPS if it is TPS, quarter view if it is a quarter view, and top view if it is a top view, so it is somewhat unfamiliar when you first encounter it. I want to quickly aim and shoot where the enemy can be seen, but it’s like going through one more step.
Such doubts had to be dispelled as soon as I went out on the field and went through a real fight. It was because the enemy didn’t just come from the front in the open field, but they kept shooting from completely unexpected angles, such as popping out from behind and shooting from the side, or popping out from the side. When a little slow bullet came flying like a flying shooting and I thought I might deal with it to some extent, there were also quick shook and stuck bullets like a railgun, so if I was not careful, I was hit without a doubt.
Of course, it’s not that there aren’t patterns in other TPS where the enemy attacks from the front as well as from an ambush, but the enemy’s attack method in ‘Ripple Effect’ was similar to flying shooting, especially barrage. When it came out of nowhere and shot it, I might see the bullets I had to avoid coming up all over the screen. It was necessary to see it in the quarter view, which secured a wider field of view, as it was vague from the TPS point of view. At first, only three hits would kill me, so getting hit one by one was a deadly threat, so I had to concentrate even more and avoid each one.
It wasn’t an unreasonable design because there were clearly prepared countermeasures, such as evasion and blocking with a shield, rather than simply going back and forth between aiming and non-aiming. In particular, if you dodged, the viewpoint automatically switched to non-aiming and reloaded, so rather than rolling following non-aiming, the connection action of looking at the situation, aiming and aiming at the enemy naturally continued.
Also, in the non-aiming state, as long as a certain amount of time passes without being attacked, your health automatically refills. If you can’t dodge, you can defend with a shield, and if you’re on standby, you can recover your health. Being out of sight doesn’t mean you can only defend, because there was a skill that might only be used in non-aim situations like grenades. Skills can be exchanged for coins obtained from enemies at points in the middle, and there are 30 types of passives in addition to active skills, so you can enjoy battles in various styles depending on how you combine them. Weapons also have distinct skills and characteristics, and when you defeat an enemy with your basic weapon, bullets are supplied, so the burden of ammunition consumption itself is less.
The boss battle was only playable at the beginning of the boss, but this also felt like a barrage element mixed in. It’s because it’s armed with such a pattern that you can tell when it will suddenly come in from outside your field of vision or if you watch the status from above. There are quite a few of those patterns that probably have to react to lightspeed to parry nicely like Soullike, so I had to look at the markings and time them in advance. Instead, once you learn the timing to a certain extent, you roll and immediately go into aiming mode, so the so-called extreme, roll, and extreme, rolling and shooting, the unique tempo that continues quickly was quite good.
In addition, the boss had a separate weakness, so if you attacked that weakness, you might make it into a groggy state and do extreme damage. The weakness is still evident in the early bosses, but there are also bosses that do not, so in that case, it seems necessary to have a strategy to keep an eye on it while going back and forth between aiming mode and non-aiming mode and respond appropriately.
Of course, these clues didn’t show up in the 15-minute demonstration version. I didn’t have the resources to actually unlock all the skills and passives, and I didn’t have the time to go through different builds by choosing different skills and passives. However, I was worried at first that it would be dizzy and distracting from the frequent change of viewpoint, but it was impressive that it was not simply to look unique, but that it was well-organized in terms of design.
First of all, roll and avoid the bullets pouring in from all directions, sometimes block them with a shield, then quickly aim and kill the enemy, and then look for a breakthrough while being vigilant once more. this has become possible. So the enemy would come from behind at some point and shoot bullets, so there was a busy hand taste of throwing grenades while fighting in quarter view and quickly subduing them in aiming mode.
‘Ripple Effect’, which is being busily developed for early access release within November, can be enjoyed not only at the G-Star site but also in the current Steam demo version. Even in a very short play time environment called demonstration, it is a work that showed off its own unique shooting action, so I think it is worth taking a picture of it once.
