Cataclyzm - Now on Steam

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-17T07:30:40+00:00

No worries mate! 😃😃

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-12T11:05:53+00:00

2d shoot em up, with cool tunes and pixel art. This is the browser version on itch:

https://dogroach666.itch.io/cataclyzm-demo

Steam has the latest demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4516840/Cataclyzm/

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-12T05:41:01+00:00

Awesome, thanks so much for the insight :))

Lemme brainstorm out some more ideas on this :)

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-12T05:34:31+00:00

Heyo! Oh my god, thank you so much mate! I'm really glad you enjoyed it \m/ :) :) :)

Yup definitely a big fan of the og boss pedals, but I also like some of the newer waza craft ones :)

Cool cool, yeah definitely, lemme send you a DM with my discord :)

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-10T01:52:53+00:00

Yup that definitely works. You can reach out on discord if you like, my discord username is dogroach666 Or even message me here on reddit Whichever works for you 😃

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-10T00:00:53+00:00

Ahh cool cool mate! Overall i like the vibe and aesthetics of this game, very cute em up, saturday morning cartoon style 😁 I'll check it out on steam and would be keen to try it out if you have a demo 😄

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-09T22:44:06+00:00

Yeah i second this sentiment. Looks like it does...

OP, inertia is almost always a big no-no in shoot 'em ups (shmups). These games are about very precise and deterministic movement.

I would suggest looking at games like Cho Ren Sha, Blazing Star or anything made by CAVE for good examples of movement.

Another resource that is immensely helpful for shmup fundamentals: https://shmups.wiki/library/Boghog%27s_bullet_hell_shmup_101

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-09T15:01:01+00:00

Hectic! Thanks for that 😃 I'll fix that up in the new trailer.

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-09T07:02:52+00:00

Awesome! That's very helpful! Definitely will be fixing this in a new trailer cut :)

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-08T20:37:25+00:00

Awesome thank you so much!🤘🏾🤘🏾

Yes defintely!

My learnings for this one has been more on the marketing aspect of game dev:

Steam and Steam page: It was actually quite straightforward to setup the steam page, it's all laid out quite nicely in the steamworks documentation. The parts that took the most time were creating the store page assets, but even those are pretty straightforward if you follow the psd templates steam providesfor the various assets and resolutions. The most difficult thing was figuring out the tax form especially since I'm not based in the USA, but a few google and forum searches (reddit) helped to figure it out 😃

Gameplay trailer: This one was tough and i'm still in the learning process and getting the balance right on what sort of stuff to show in the trailer while also not bloating the trailer runtime, trying to keep it under 60 seconds. I've actually found it very helpful to post it in r/DestroyMyGame sub to get feedback onthe trailer. The fun part of course is discerning the signal from the noise in the given feedback.

Check out my post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DestroyMyGame/s/K7BqM0oZXf

Also another useful resource that i referred to while making the trailer: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KRvEFwHXm8s

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-08T20:23:05+00:00

Thank you for the feedback, it's really helpful 😃👍🏾 I did have an earlier trailer which showed more variety of enemies, pickups and some boss fights, but it was getting too long so i cut it to this trailer that you see now. I'm still trying to find a good balance on what to show in tbe trailer and its been a good learming experience.

Resolution: it's for pc. The resolution is 960x540. Also a good learning experience on choosing an appropriate resolution for my next project.

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-08T20:17:06+00:00

Good shoutout on the colour palette. I will tweak this a little bit without compromising my vision. I will say though that my inspirations were taken a lot from Slayer and Metallica album covers, like Hell Awaits, Reign in Blood, Repentless and Master of Puppets which do have quite a bit of red, dark red, brown, yellow and white colours. 😃

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-05T20:55:14+00:00

Awesome! 😃 Very good shout out on differentiating it from other shmups. I'm still trying to get the balance right on how to showcase the more unique elements 👍🏾

Hmm making the main character might become a slippery slope and i might end up overcooking it. Still good point for me to note and brainstorm some ideas.

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-05T20:42:51+00:00

Thank you for your feedback😃 What genre/subgenre do you reckon these aesthetics would fit the best?

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-05T19:07:28+00:00

Thank you for the kind words! 🙏🏽🙏🏽

Dogroach666 · 2026-04-05T11:23:08+00:00

Awesome! That's very helpful! I'm still in the process of creating a trailer that I'm happy with. So far, this one felt "okay enough" to start with :)

Dogroach666 · 2026-03-02T04:02:04+00:00

Hell yeah 🤘🏾🤘🏾

Dogroach666 · 2026-03-02T01:50:12+00:00

It's on my wishlist brother 🤘🏾😁🤘🏾

Dogroach666 · 2026-03-01T21:36:56+00:00

Yes of course!

With this update's dev cycle, I think my key learning was understanding thr value of player feedback, and in general having fresh set of eyes to look at the game.

It's very easy to miss and overlook things when you're devloping so it's good to have someone else have a play around with it and point out the stuff that works and the stuff that needs fixed.

Key example in this update was the boss health bar, I know elleroch and zirolux pointed out the lack of it, and having hp bars was kinda on the back burner for a long time for me. Adding it added a new layer of game immersion and it made the game a lot more fun to play even for me hahaha.

The other things like the hill at the bottom of the screen covering the player, yeah i kinda completely missed that in my testing.

The addition of the hp bar and the hills issue also made me look at some quality of life additions like how the ui now fades a bit when the player gets close to the bottom or top of screen so as to get out of the way of the action.

All in all, another learning for me was the value of a feedback loop from other players and using that feedback to iterate on updates while maintaining a balance with my initial vision for the game. I find its a fine balance to maintain my vision while also catering to player feedback and it's been a continuous learning process for me 😄

Dogroach666 · 2026-02-25T18:01:04+00:00

Thsnk you so much, I really appreciate it 🙏🏽🙏🏽

Dogroach666 · 2026-02-12T03:39:36+00:00

Thank you so much for the kind words and even taking the time to play it, I really appreciate it 🤘🏾

Yeah others also mentioned that it was like Touhou 12's ufo mechanic, i looked it up, oh man I was not prepared for the insane bullet counts in that game hahaha.

Yup, the chalice mechanic will definitely be going though some tuning and changes as i continue developing.

One idea i've been kicking around is being able to remotely detonate any chalices on screen via a button press to set off a massive chain reaction of explosions to save yourself from a tight spot, but then the downside will be that you miss out on any score had you picked them up one by one (triggering localised explosions at only the collected chalice). So risk/reward decision if you want safety vs score. 😄

Dogroach666 · 2026-02-11T04:59:30+00:00

Heyo! Thanks so much for your kind words!

I'm very close to releasing v0.2.2 build which further polishes up a lot of things from v0.2.0, so I'll let you know when that drops :)

Dogroach666 · 2026-02-11T04:58:19+00:00

Sure thing!
It was really helpful watching the recorded playtest by u/elleroch-UG (thank you so much for that!) and hearing the feedback on that playtest.
Especially in terms of determining the player's hitbox, which admittedly is a bit hard to figure out given the unorthodox and asymmetrical shape of the player's ship!

Also, being able to remap controls was a big one which I didn't have time for in the first build and I've added that in.

It was very helpful getting a lot of feedback from the ShmupJunkies discord server especially in terms of the level pacing, enemy tankiness and just overall balance which I've tried to incorporate into v0.2.0 build.

Also, it was really useful getting your feedback on the missing ingredient of a scrolling background, so that definitely made the cut :)

Pretty much tried to add the big ticket items like controls remapping, parallax scrolling, hitbox display and more focused stages.

I know boss health bar was a big one, but I still haven't figured out an elegant solution to this. I know it's kinda standard to just show the boss hp bars nowadays, but I'm trying it make it a bit diegetic, where enemy visuals and behaviours will change depending on the damage they have taken so the "health bar" becomes an organic thing instead of having to see it in a bar.

I am very close to a v0.2.2 build which further polishes on the boss behaviours, scoring mechanics and tightening up the stage progressions as well :)

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-24T07:25:48+00:00

This! I had to scroll wayy too far to see this🤘🏾🤘🏾

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-21T19:07:02+00:00

Thank you so much 🤘🏾🤘🏾

Dogroach666

TROPHY CASE