Crimzon Clover

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Included: Beam Spam, Impressive Pyrotechnics, lots of multipliers, and Bullet Hell. Not included or necessary: Characters and plot.

Crimzon Clover is a doujin Vertical Scrolling Shooter developed by Yotsubane. The game is perhaps notable for its high production values; some say that it looks and plays just like a commercial shooter. It was initially released at Comiket 79 and has gone gold, with a retail release date of January 3, 2011.

You can download a three-stage trial here.

A version 1.01 patch for the full version is available here, and adds new features like replays and Western-style digit grouping while correcting a few bugs. However, if you've bought a copy since March 2011, it should be of a print run that already has 1.01.

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Crimzon Clover contains examples of the following:

• Awesome but Impractical: Bullet Canceling in Unlimited Mode can be done by successfully destroying an enemy with part of a full or full minus 1 lock-on attack (the exact number raises as you get more items and power up, with the absolute limit being 32 during Double Break). The problem comes in that locking on takes time, your movement speed is decreased, and you only fire straight forward while doing so, and like with the Lock-On score multiplier, you have to actually destroy an enemy with the lock-on shot itself to cancel the bullets.
  • Compounding this is that while bullet canceling does increase both the main and sub gauges (leading to faster and more frequent breaking), it is actually EASIER to get the full lock-on during Break mode, and even then, you have to know when there's enough damage to be dealt that you can get the full lock.
• Bullet Hell
• Cap: Averted. You can score over 1 trillion in Unlimited Mode, but the counter won't stop going up. In 1.01, when this occurs, the game automatically switches over to World notation for score.
  • Similarly, the Break multiplier is also effectively uncapped - it might look like it only goes up to x9999, but you can break 10,000 in stage 3 in Original Mode. The actual cap is an unreachable-in-normal-play x99999, which would require someone to get to x25000 with a full sub-guage and then double break, which is impossible due to how fast the multiplier decreases at higher numbers.
• Continuing Is Painful: To get continues, you have to buy them in the item shop for an increasing price, initially 1,000 credits. If you're trying to unlock Unlimited Mode or (particularly) the Type-Z ship, buying continues isn't a good idea.
  • The continues are also one-use only, which means you pay 1,000 credits ahead of time for the use of ONE continue in a later run. this means if you pay for 5 continues and then use 3 in your next run, you will only have 2 continues left.
  • Additionally, using continues before reaching Crimson Heart, the actual final boss, causes the game to end right after Gorgoneion (that giant fucking ball) without any staff roll. Additionaly, if you continued before downing the first life bar of Crimson Heart, you still won't see the staff roll. The condition for unlocking the Type-Z ship can be best summarized as "reach the staff roll."
• Cutscene: The scene of your ship taking off in Stage 1. Having to watch it on every run in the 0.20 trial proved annoying to many players. In 0.30, it was made skippable, and in the final version, the cutscene skip has to be unlocked...although it is also the cheapest unlock available at 1000 item credits so one playthrough will yield enough credits for it.
• Degraded Boss: Both Hecatoncheir (stage 2 boss) and Maelstrom (stage 3 boss) reappear in the second half of stage 5... As Elite Mooks.
  • And then it gets subverted when glitching Gorgoneion, as the game gets confused and spawns a boss Hecatoncheir instead of a mook Hecatoncheir, which you can defeat for the usual drops.
• Development Hell: not as drastic as other cases, but the first real appearance of the game to the english-speaking audience was in January 2010. Many people were expecting the full game to be at the following Comiket (number 78 - the 79th Comiket did have the full version). The game has finally shipped to preorderers (in late December), and the retail release is January 3, 2011. Yes, over a full year was spent on this game.
  • Better yet, according to Yotsubane's blog, it actually took him five years to finish this game.
• Difficulty Spike: Two of them. The first is at Maelstrom, and the second is at Gorgoneion.
• Double Unlock: Among other things in the Limitter shop, Type-Z. The BGM and Practice Mode stages are justified in that you have to reach the stage/boss to unlock them for purchase (although the price is still kind of high), the Type-Z is unlocked for purchase upon reaching EX Boss (Crimson Heart's second part), which requires a one-credit clear up to that point.
• Dynamic Difficulty: The rank system in Simple Mode, which determines the flying speed of enemy bullets. Raising the rank will make the game harder, but doing so is necessary if you ever want get a high score.
• Easy Mode Mockery: Playing the game on Simple Mode? Sorry, no break mode for you!
• Frickin' Laser Beams: Every boss in Unlimited Mode have at least one attack that involves laser beams. Also, the sub-weapon of Type-I and Type-Z ship is a volley of homing laser.
• Fridge Brilliance: Notice the horizontal line of light in the background of the logo? On the ranking screens, that line lines up with the #1 score.
• Golden Snitch: Players who can reach the Final Boss on Original and Unlimited modes tend to notice that a vast majority of their points come from the fifth stage; you can earn as much as 600,000,000,000 points on Original Stage 5 before reaching Gorgoneion. Mind you, the current world record on for Original as of this writing stands at about 1,223,000,000,000.
• Harder Than Hard: Unlimited Mode, unlocked by paying 300,000 credits in the item shop.
• Roboteching: Your secondary attack, a lock-on laser.
• Macross Missile Massacre: The sub-weapon of Type-II ship.
• Mercy Invincibility: The full list of things that trigger it (for you and (non-simple) Crimson Heart) include death, bombing, entering Break Mode, entering Double Break Mode, and leaving either break mode. Combine this with the fact that leaving break mode only takes away half your break bar as a penalty and that the Type-Z ship can easily recover that second half of the break bar, and you get easy access to invincibility.
• Nintendo Hard: Averted for Original Mode and low-rank Simple Mode. On the other hand, Unlimited Mode and high-rank Simple Mode are very much Nintendo Hard.
• Nonstandard Game Over: Continuing before reaching either part of Crimson Heart causes the game to end prematurely with a monochrome screen.
• No Plot, No Problem: Even if you check the manual, there isn't a plot. Though hints of a plot are found in obscure places along with lore regarding the players' ships and boss characters. (The jist of it is that the player must save the world from destruction by stopping Gorgoneion from constructing an ultimate weapon known as the Crimson Heart.)
• Pinball Scoring: You bet! High scores of 12 digits are not uncommon.
• Retraux: The last unlockable sound test track is a chiptune version of the Stage 1 music.
• Shout-Out: Lots of them. Most notably, Stage 3 is a shout out to Mushihime-sama, and stage 4 is a shout out to Battle Garegga's 5th stage, complete with a boss featuring random interchangeable parts.
• Smart Bomb: If your Break Gauge is between half full and full, you can use half the gauge to fire a screen-clearing bomb. However, if you're playing in Original or Unlimited, it decreases your Break Rate (and consumes half of the Break Mode timer if done during Break Mode).
• Super Mode: The "Break Mode", which temporarily boosts your speed and firepower as well as doubling your break multiplier and increases its accumulation rate. You also accumulate showers of point-increasing stars as you shoot enemies and gain locks faster, making bullet canceling actually feasible in Unlimited. On top of all that, it clears all enemy bullets currently onscreen like the standard bomb and gives your ship a short invincibility period, so players are encouraged to enter Break Mode should they find themselves in a tight spot.
  • Up to Eleven: You can charge and activate a second Break gauge to activate Double Break, which doubles the effects of Break Mode. This effectively quadruples the Break Rate Multiplier.
• This Is Gonna Suck: On Unlimited difficulty, not only does the game HUD sport a red background, but the ocean turns red too.
• True Final Boss: Crimson Heart. As a two-parter. Fortunately, the second part is an Anticlimax Boss.
• Wake Up Call Boss: Maelstrom, the third boss, especially the second form.
  • In Unlimited Mode, however, the stage 1 boss, Titanix, becomes the Wake Up Call Boss, while Maelstrom ascends to That One Boss.
• X Meets Y: The game has been described as Ray Force meets Ketsui.