It’s safe to say, I’m a pretty big fan of Hizoka T Ohkuba - that should be evident from the fawning fanboyish intro to my interview with him a few months back. I am also, I believe - if you can forgive the self-congratulatory tone for a second - the only English language site to have interviewed him.
The great news is, Ohkuba has just released his latest title, Ray-Hound. Unlike his suggestion in our interview that he would be working on a 3D action title, it’s a 2D shmup. Not that I’m saying that’s a bad thing, though. Ray-Hound is a pretty exceptional game.
It’s also one hell of a slick looking game - everything moves fast and smoothly, and his limited colour pallet is wonderfully effective. It’s a very different game to Warning Forever, though - Ray-Hound is mouse controlled, for one. The game is set inside a cricular arena, around which you move your ship, which is unable to fire. Your only weapon is your shield, which is set to the left mouse button, with which you can collect the lasers shot at you by gun turrets and slingshot them back. It’s much less complex than it sounds, and you’ll soon be slinging shots at multiple targets - then the action gets really interesting once you hit some of the higher levels. Even if it’s not as immediate as Warning Forever, it still brought quite a smile to my face.
I’ve got a few problems with it - there’s no sound, there’s no options screen, and there’s no high score table, but it’s clearly an early build of the game. Okhuba’s website notes that it’s version 0.80, and it seems to be just a release for Comiket, which is where Okhuba traditionally demos his games. Warning Forever took a number of releases before Ohkuba was happy with it, and I’m expecting the same thing from this.
[via the2bears]