Barrage Fantasia

HISTORY

Barrage Fantasia

Barrage Fantasia is a vertical shooting game developed by HEY, released in 2021 for Steam and Nintendo Switch by the publisher Hanaji Games. The game features a visual style inspired by classic and retro shmups from the 90s, a PC Engine styled soundtrack, a large number of bosses, and a variety of gameplay settings. Visuals are colorful and present stark contrasts between background and foreground. Due to pixel size, the actual play area is rather small and offers little room to maneuver, especially when there's lots of enemy bullets on screen.

The story follows a girl named Herb, who claims to be a great witch, and lives in a poisonous swamp on the outskirts of a faraway country. One day, a red jewel is stolen from a shrine under her control. Herb escapes the swamp for the first time in order to recover her jewels.

Gameplay Overview

Barrage Fantasia features five stages to play in the standard Arcade Mode. The game features a training mode that allows the player to practice individual stages and encounters at their leisure. The player can vary their playstyle with multiple different combinations of Familiar Attacks, Bomb settings, and Life settings for replayability and gameplay variety.

When the player starts up the game for the first time, a specially designed tutorial level will play. This level teaches newcomers the basics like movement, attacking, and dodging. After completing the tutorial stage, it will still be accessible later in "Short" and "Training" mode.

There are three different modes to play:

Arcade - The standard mode, playing through the five stages in order. All levels are played in a row offering no continues.

Short - Functions as a level select, allowing the player to choose whatever level they want to play. After completing a level, the player is taken back to the short mode menu in order to choose another stage or replay the previous one.

Training - The player can choose specific parts of a stage in order to practice difficult sections of the game.

Controls

The game automatically detects plugged-in controllers. Controls cannot be remapped.

On PC using XBOX controller:

Movement - Left Stick or D-Pad

Shot - X

Strong Shot - X+A

Slow - A

Special - Right Bumper

Keyboard controls:

Movement - Arrow keys

Shot - C

Strong Shot - C+Z

Slow - Z

Special - X

Characters

Herb

The hero and self-proclaimed great witch.

She lives near Poison Swamp and her business is to manage shrines and make suspicious potions from herbs.

She respects her grandmother, a court mage, and is a hard worker who does not miss her magical training every day.

Rose

The bandit leader of a bandit and commander of the Pigmen.

She thinks all in the world is for her as a justification to rob it.

She hates to lose and will continue to fight alone even after the departure of her comrades Balun and Philet.

Baran

Part of Rose's entourage, the tall one.

He is good at developing mechas, and most of the bandits' mechas were designed by Baran.

He has a gentlemanly personality and respects Fillet's ideas to the fullest.

Fillet

Part of Rose's entourage, the short one.

A strategic and cunning tactician.

His motto is to run away before he gets into a rough pinch.

Familiars/Servants

Items

TBD

Scoring

TBD

Technical Specs

Resolution is fixed, but players are able to choose between windowed or fullscreen modes. Currently (as of January 2022) the game doesn't remember user settings, so the player has to engage fullscreen mode every time the game is started. The game runs at a fixed rate of 60 fps. TATE Mode is only supported in Switch version,

References & Contributors

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Page organization by CHA-STG

STORY

A girl named Herb who claims to be a great witch lives in a poisonous swamp on the outskirts of a faraway country. One day, a red jewel is stolen from a shrine under her control. Herb escapes the swamp for the first time in order to recover her jewels.