Hydorah

By: Derek Yu

On: June 4th, 2010

Hydorah is here! If you’ve been following the game’s development, I think that’s all you need to hear. It’s great – go download it.

If you’ve never heard of Locomalito, they’re a Spanish indie game crew that has a very well-defined philosophy of creating freeware games that try to redefine arcade gaming for today. Their influences are very clear. In Hydorah’s case, it’s a horizontal shoot ’em up that, at first glance, seems most inspired by Konami’s 1985 arcade hit Gradius.

Aside from some superficial similarities, however, Hydorah is actually fairly different. The game employs three types of weapons: primary, secondary, and “bomb”. The primary and secondary weapons can be upgraded by separate power-ups (red and green). However, a red power-up will turn into green and back if you leave it, giving you some choice about how you want to upgrade. Bomb weapons (yellow) and speed power-ups (blue) are similarly flipped during the game. There’s one other power-up, a purple shield that allows you to take one hit.

Hydorah has 16 levels, but since there are branching paths you needn’t play every one to complete the game. The levels vary in size, from one segment to three or more. Each segment is short but challenging, and ends with a big boss battle. At the end of each level you’re rewarded with a new weapon, either primary, secondary, or bomb, which you can select at the beginning of the next level. There’s some strategy to the weapons that you pick, although they generally seem to get better as you progress. I haven’t collected all the weapons, but it seems like pretty standard fair (wide shot, laser, missiles, etc.).

One of Hydorah’s biggest innovations is its save system. Now, having a save system at all is pretty unique for a shoot ’em up, and might be a turn-off for arcade purists (especially since highscore is also saved), but in my opinion it works pretty well in practice, and is much preferable to having even limited continues. In Hydorah you start with just three saves, and there’s only one save slot. This limited save system forces you to get pretty good at the game but gives you some choice about how you practice. While it may not necessarily redefine the arcade genre, I think it’s a step in the right direction, and a nice concession to more casual players who want to see the game.

The graphics and music are fantastic. Gryzor87’s soundtrack, in particular, deserves mention, especially since it never loops – each track was composed specifically to last as long as the segment of the level it’s played over. The levels themselves are extremely varied, and take you from deep space to planetary surfaces to underground caves, each with a unique backdrops, enemies, and bosses. Some levels even have unique weather that affect your movement. If I have one complaint, it’s that a technical issue with the game causes the graphics to be a bit blurry on my computer (there are some suggestions on how to fix this in the readme, but they didn’t work perfectly).

Hydorah comes highly recommended. It’s a challenging game with an incredible amount of polish and enough new content and features to make it stand-out from the old games it’s based on. Between this and 8-bit Killer Locomalito is definitely a developer to watch. Can’t wait to see what comes out of them next.

TIGdb: Entry for Hydorah

Posted in Freeware, Highly Recommended, Shoot-em-ups, Windows | Tags: Locomalito

http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

P.S. Locomalito, if you read this – please use PNGs for your screenshots. Your pixels are too lovely to be wrecking with JPG artifacts and taking clean screenshots is made difficult by the screen-blurring problem. THANKS.
Aname

84 megs? Eh.
rinkuhero

very nice artwork; the trailer vid looks great too (http://vimeo.com/7066986)

i like that it has voice acting; more indie games should use voice acting!
Marcus

Good job on keeping the frontpage updated recently Derek :D
Dodger

Lovely! This is one of those freeware games I've been anticipating and hoping for since the demo.

I'm blown away by the quality of the package. Great graphics, great sound, great gameplay! Everything has been running silky smooth for me and the gameplay remains fun and challenging without being extremely difficult. I love it. And, it's free!!! Ginorminous Awesomeness! Aaaaaaaaannnnd – it has great gamepad support! Everything about this freeware gem feels user friendly, intuitive, and polished.

The only downside – the human body needs sleep! :-)

But I'll keep playing till my eyes fog up and become glazed with a gooey substance and then caked with a crusty film of dry “sleep” also referred to as “chicken doo-doo”.

Don't pass this one up – unless you suffer from some form of mental illness.

Cheers!

P.S. I concur, good job keeping the front page updated! :)
Chrono

Derek, if you have an NVIDIA card, try turning on NVIDIA Scaling with fixed aspect ratio in the 'Adjust Desktop Size and Position' on the NVIDIA Control Panel. The graphics look perfect on my display.

Then again I'm runing at 1920×1080 and it might so happen my resolution falls on a square number to the base resolution. No idea. But that setting probably takes care of a lot of things.
Chrono

Looking at it closer though, it appears Hydorah's fullscreen option doesn't actually affect the desktop resolution. Sorry!
Evicous

Try changing your display to 16-bit color. That fixed the blurriness for me.
http://nuclearheart.com/ !CE-9

That's a little Christmas right there.
http://www.derekyu.com Derek Yu

Thanks! :)
http://moonloop.vg Eclipse

So now we expect to hear saturated voice acting in the near future, if you know what I mean :P
rinkuhero

there's probably far too much text in the game for that, but it's a consideration; it could be used for special parts or highlights perhaps. one of my older games (alphasix) did have voice acting though, and i liked the experience.
Skofo

No indie game has made me ragequit so hard before.
dugan

Press F9 and you get png screenshots that are pixel sharp!
Kvalsternacka

That is some amazing shit right there. Old school challenge, I love it.
Inco

Awesome game, but I have a problem – I cant hear any music in game, menus, anywhere. Is there any solution for this?
bradf

Is your OS also Windows XP by any chance…?
I have the same problem, which is a shame as I was really looking foward to playing it… but I don't want to try it until I get the music working.

I had the same problem with Iji and other gamemaker games that use an mp3 soundtrack.
I've done a little bit of searching around and it seems to be something to do with the fact that it uses windows media player to play the files, although I haven''t found any clear answers. I'm not very technically-minded and have no clue how programs work. I might try converting the mp3s to wavs later – that may do the trick but the program might only recognise mp3s or something, so it may be a waste of time.
If anyone has the same problem and knows how to resolve it i'd be greatful.
davidp

this game is sooo awesome!
great job guys! :)
bradf

I know! The huge file size is digusting. It is utterly ridiculous. I would have played this game if it was a realistic size of 5megs, but something as insanely big as this is just stupid for an indie game. It might have been worth my time if it was smaller. I can belive someone actually expects ME to waste my time going to all the trouble to download such an enormous game. Until the maker of the game learns how to compress their game to AT THE VERY LEAST 10 megs, it isn't worth the huge amount of time it takes to download it and the vast amounts of hard disk it takes up.
I can't believe the sheer gall this “Locomalito” has in expecting people to just download and play their gargantuan game. We are Indie Gamers and we deserve FAR better than this insulting nonsense.
anon

Awesome game, gotta play more to comment more in deep, though. So far I love it!

BTW, Locomalito isn't a crew, it's just the nickname of the guy making the game. So shouldn't be addressed as a group. :)
anon

Oh, come on. It isn't that bad, I'll pass on anything 200+ megs no matter how good it looks, but 80 is reasonable. I agree he could've used a better audio format to take up less space, but gamedevs nowadays don't give a shit about making small size games.
MisterX

Concerning the sound problems, I'll just quote “gamer” over from the IG Weblog:

“To help with sound issue,
I found this at shmup forum:

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=15…

Download that, and put the saud.gml and the saud.dll file in the game folder.

Music problems solved!

Hope it works…”
bradf

I just don't know what to do with you.
bradf

Thanks, although I tried that but it unfortunately does not work. I have a feeling it's something to do with Windows media player or perhaps some kind of codec issue with mp3s. I did try converting the mp3s to wavs although that didn't work. I'll try a few more things.
Vattic

Great game, unfortunately when a lot of objects are on screen at once things lag horribly for me.

i7, Windows 7 64bit, ATI Radion 5800, 6gb of RAM. So my computer should run it fine.
Dodger

Size matters! ;-P
Inco

it does not work for me too.

@bradf – I have the same problem in Iji as you. and updating wmp, setting it to default player, updating sound card drivers do nothing for me.
Andy Hull

I'm loving this game a lot! Graphics and music are great, the game play is old school fun, and the level and enemy designs are fun and varied. I have one minor quibble with the game though…

I dislike the slippery slope that dying creates. Because your ship gets powered down some every time you restart, having a large stock of extra men doesn't aid you much at all. The game gets harder and harder the more you die, so you are best off simply restarting from your save if you lose even one or two ships. This is especially problematic on the bosses, where there is no way to build back up– you have to defeat them the first try or face steeper and steeper odds.

One solution might be after a death to let you select a new location if you want (ie.. back out to the map) So you can enter an easier level and build back up again before trying to tackle the harder level again. This is how say, super mario world works, where you can use easier levels to grab a fire flower or whatever before trying to tackle a challenging level that you can't beat if you enter as just small Mario.
xhunterko

For those of you whining about the download size, pfffft to you sirs. It doesn't take much longer then a good album from iimusic.net does. That is to say, on a 1G connection, with at least 1 or two other users, at least 15-16 minutes. Hopefully I'll get around to playing this one. It just takes a little patience to download it. Honestly, if you want more quality in your indie games then your gonna have to expect slower release times and longer download times. I mean what did you expect? Look at the screen shots and the video. I'm surprised it's not taking me 30 minutes! Get an internet upgrade or stop by a hi-fi hot spot and download it from there, pansies.
xhunterko

May I also say that I'm surprised it's not something like $10-$20 bucks as well. I am delighted that it's freeware.
bradf

OK, I gave up trying to get it to work on my laptop due to the sound issues so i'm playing it on someone elses computer.
Even if this game was 5gb and I was forced to brutally punch myself in the face each time I played it, it would still be well worth it. This game is AWESOME.
I cannot not believe that the author has created such a delightful bit of freeware that did not exist previously. I consider myself a privilleged human being to have the oppurtunity to play this.
It has been too long since a game has incited the nostalgic emotion of frustration and kept me going back for more.

The sprites, animations and details are gorgeous, the music is that arcady, catchy, shooty stuff that makes you associate specific music with memories of lamentation of your lack of horizontal schump skill.

I died by crashing into the scenery. This game is excellent.

Disclaimer: OK I am a Gradius fan – but even if you are not this game is highly polished, difficult and very very fun. It even has voice acting – that was a pleasant surprise.
joehonkie

Been psyched about this for a while. Sweet.
http://www.drazzke.com Noel Berry

Awesome game! I suck at it, but it's really fun, and the artwork, music, and gameplay are perfect.

The game is worth the 80mb file size.
Smithy

Wait wait wait

Are you the same BradF that was just ranting about how disgusting and terrible the file size is, just a few comments up on the page? Or a different BradF?
Smithy

Eh. Must have been sarcasm. I guess I didn't read it right.
Al3xand3r

I wish I was good at these games. I can't get past level 2 yet it has 16?!
orange

I can't tell if this guy is serious or not.

“We are Indie Gamers and we deserve FAR better than this insulting nonsense.”

You don't deserve anything. The sense of entitlement in this post is appalling. If you don't like it, don't play it. No one cares.
Ruber Eaglenest

Are you serious? Thanks god nobody is going to listen you. Go, continue to download crappy 1 Mb games, that the rest of us will download a game of 50 Mb of shump glory, good music, good graphics, and 16 levels with 30 bosses.
Ruber Eaglenest

If it is irony, it is a very bad one…
http://www.specialattack.net Lim-Dul

The levels don't really get more difficult – just different. You have to use your saves and just man up. (Or use infinite lives like I did for the first playthrough :-D).
Hurf-durf

He was being sarcastic, you gigantic dolt.
Hurrrrrrr

Jesus H. Christ you guys are something else. You wouldn't recognize sarcasm if it hit you in the face with an iron tire and killed your dog.
Wenis Martin

Sarcasm is getting a bit long in the tooth isn't it?
Yes sarcasm – what was it again the bastion of pseudointelligence.
http://moonloop.vg Eclipse

hehe, noob :P
bradf

Does this mean it is part of the fortification (of pseudointelligence) of irony?

Back in ma day, people just used to call me “idiot trying to talk all smart”. But now they indirectly impy I am “pseudointelligent” and all of this long-word malarkey. I like to imagine that they are slightly sloshing some expensive red wine at me as they look down upon this vulgar peasants attempts to mingle with the gentry.
ngajoe

And I also have problems getting the music to play. Sound is good, but no music. Keep us posted if a solution is found!
Troll

So, is a FREE, highly polished stg a “insulting nonsense” that offends Your
Highness? Go have your brain checked, they might find a tumor.

Besides, it's the soundtrack that's 60mb, the core game's about 20mb.
mtarini

Locomalito gets 100K of Kudos of this game!
Old school, arty, perfect execution.

However, the save-system is a brave attempt gone totally wrong. The result, unfortunately, is that the game is too fustrating to be any fun. Most people, like me, will never see any level past level 4 or 5 because it takes just too many runs of level 1-2 to get there, which is probably a pity (due to saving system, you have to do a flawless run of the first few levels to be able to go past farther ones).

I wouldn't know what else to suggest, but to give up the interesting, but flawed, new ideas on the saving system and use a standard one.

(that's the old problem with difficulty. Make it too easy and it is not challanging => not fun. Make it hard, and it is fun to do… the first few times.Force the player to do 1000000 flawless actions in a row, or restart from skratch, and it takes 2^1000000 runs to get it right. Unfortunately it stops being fun after the first few dozens. Well timed save point avoid this problem. Limited saves bring it back, even if it is postponed by a little).
rinkuhero

i'd try updating directx and windows media player

but yeah, this is why i don't use gm's sound engine, i use a dll; i wish everyone who used game maker would use a sound dll instead for issues like this
rinkuhero

with game maker games what matters is individual cpu speed, not ram or videocard. if you have a quad core at 2.0ghz for instance, you'd run it much slower than someone with a single core at 3.0ghz. game maker relies on cpu cycles more than anything, and only uses one cpu at once.