Pawarumi

⚠️ work in progress ⚠️



Pawarumi is a (horizontally displayed) vertical shooting game in a sci-fi setting with pre-Columbian culture influences. It was developed and published by Manufacture 43 in 2018. It was ported to the Xbox One, Nintendo Switch and PS4 in 2019.

The game tells the story of Axo, best pilot of the planet, redeeming herself from exactions perpetuated under alien influence. Her ship, Chukaru, is the only Earth one capable of mixing the energies of the Condor, the Jaguar and the Serpent gods. By a rock-paper-scissor like mechanic, firing one of its 3 weapons, depending on the type of enemy hit, will either charge its super attack, cure its shield or maximize damage.

Basics
There are no lives or continues/extends in Pawarumi, only a bar depicting the amount of shield available, which can be recovered at any time by using the Boost mechanic. This also means that every run will automatically be a 1CC.

When hit, the shield depletes by a third. Do note that ground-based enemies do not hurt you on contact.

Both the shield and super attack bars carry over from stage to stage.

Hitbox
The Chukaru changes shape depending on the divinity/weapon it is using, but the ship’s hitbox is always limited to the glowing pod in the middle of it.

Enemy hitboxes are circles and in the case of bosses a cluster of circles. (click on images below to see a bigger version)

Trinity Mechanic
Contrary to many shoot’em ups, Pawarumi doesn’t have any items to pick up and make your weapons progress, they are at their maximum potential right from the start. It features a game mechanic called Trinity: the three basic weapons are powered by three divinities: Condor (blue), Serpent (green) and Jaguar (red). Enemies are powered by those same divinities (colors). The interaction between a weapon hit and an enemy triggers one of the three bonuses of the Trinity: Boost, Drain & Crush.

A mnemonic to remember the different combinations can be as follows:


 * the same colour always boosts / regenerates health,
 * green grass overgrows the red-ish soil (crush),
 * blue ice freezes the green grass (crush),
 * red fire melts the blue ice (crush),
 * and then drain is just the inverse of crush.



Boost
It regenerates your shield AND the enemy hit will shoot slightly faster. (x1.25 in discovery mode, x1.5 in normal mode, x2 in heroic mode)


 * Green Serpent weapon boosts on green serpent enemies.
 * Blue Condor weapon boosts on blue condor enemies.
 * Red Jaguar weapon boosts on red jaguar enemies.

Drain
It will transform enemies’ pain into energy to progressively charge each level of the Super Attack.


 * Green Serpent weapon drains blue condor enemies.
 * Blue Condor weapon drains red jaguar enemies.
 * Red Jaguar weapon drains blue condor enemies.

Crush
It will multiply the damages inflicted to enemies by a factor of x1.5.


 * Green Serpent weapon crushes red jaguar enemies.
 * Blue Condor weapon crushes green serpent enemies.
 * Red Jaguar weapon crushes blue condor enemies.

Super Attack
The Super Attack charges up through Drain, and can stack up to to 3 levels. Each level fires more projectiles that go even faster.

When triggered it deplets all of the gathered super power and its effect is a mix between a hyper and a bullet-clearing bomb: within the circle around the ship, enemy bullets are cleared, and powerful homing projectiles fire to all directions. Projectiles are able to hit several times.

A counter appears up above the ship exponentially growing when each projectile hits. A special bonus is awarded based on the final value of that counter.

Controls
The game is designed for analog gamepads but attention has been paid for it to be also played with digital 8-way arcade sticks. The movement of the ship is analog (no inertia!), very fine and precise movement can be achieved with the joystick.

Three buttons fire the three main weapons, a fourth one fires the super attack, and the last fifth one, "brake", halves the speed of the ship.

Default configuration
Button assignments are reconfigurable in the options.

Modes
The main mode is Arcade, where the stage order is also dependent on the difficulty they choose. Do note that any run in Pawarumi is effectively a 1CC run, since the game does not have lives nor credits, but a health bar instead.

Training mode allows the player to re-play individual stages. Each stage reached in Arcade mode will unlock here at the difficulty it was attempted at.

In addition to that there is also a Tutorial mode that features a small tutorial level.

Difficulties
The game has three difficulty settings: Discovery, Normal and Heroic. Each one plays the story slightly differently with the orders of the levels changed. Only Normal and Heroic enable access to the last level, K-7Z4-C04TL. Only by playing in Heroic mode can the final boss be truly defeated.

Story
In the far future, an alternate reality… The descendants of Aztecs, Mayans, Nazcas… all united, spread their culture and technology all over the world.

They mastered light then gravity. With the ability to make the most dense rocks ”fly“, they started to build immense structures out of stones and went on building flying mineral ships.

Through their technology and their wisdom, they managed to make contact with three ethereal and powerful beings. Those deities took physical body in the shape of a Serpent, a Condor and a Jaguar and gave them access to their infinite energies, before leaving.

That power raised a keen interest amongst beings hidden in the shadows of the galaxy. They took control of Axo’s mind, the best pilot of Earth. She was the only one able to master Chukaru, the ship powered by all three energies.

Through her, they destroyed humans’ defenses… But Axo’s will is strong, will she manage to defeat them before her civilization is gone forever?

The story varies a bit depending on the difficulty taken – the stages (and therefore story sequences) are in different order, and the last stage is only accessible on the higher two difficulties, with the true ending available only on the highest difficulty.

Below the stages are laid in the order as in the Heroic difficulty, which should be the “true” story and ending.

(TODO: move the strategy parts to and actually add story here?)

Alaska Secret Base class T.I.K.A.L


coordinates: 60 38'N 139 57'W

boss: The Ice Commander

The Ice Commander consists of a face and four floating hands. The hands slowly move in a pattern and fire lasers in order to narrow the space you can maneuver in, while the face shoots bullets. As you destroy the hands you have more space to maneuver, so a valid surivial approach is to prioritise getting rid of the two outermost hands. Another approach is to damage the face before destroying the hands to shorten the last attack.

Xibalba: Doors of the Underworld


coordinates: 30 03'N 100 06'W

Before reaching the Xibalba Keylock, you are flooded by several huge swarms of enemies. A good option is to use the Super Attack and rake in a lot of points as well.

mid-stage boss(?):

Xibalba Keylock – you need to boost the keylock three times in order to unlock it, while you are being attacked by several waves of enemies of the same colour than the lock is at that time.

After the door you unlocked closes behind you, a giant ball starts nearing you, making your space to maneuver ever smaller. In order to keep it at bay you need to crush the enemies that spawn. Upon doing so, the crushed enemy will crash into the ball bumping it slightly back.

boss: The Warden

The Warden spider has several attack patterns, but in addition to that, between its attack phase it will spawn three floating rocks each with a coloured portal(?). It will then turn them over and shuffle them in the style of three card monte and call you to perform either a crush, boost, or drain. You may shoot at any of the rocks, as long as you use the right attack at it. If you guess correctly, that rock will fall and the boss will reappear weakened. If you get it wrong, the boss will regenerate a limb and with it some of its health. An easy tactic is to either always keep an eye on the same colour.

Dune Ocean of Cha-Ni


coordinates: 24 16'S 15 12'E

mid-stage boss: Pyramid

The pyramid flies off and later attaches to the head of the snake boss. The end-stage snake boss’ head will be of the same colour as that of the pyramid at the time you defeated it. The end-stage snake boss will use different attacks depending on which colour its head is. (TODO: explain the different attacks)

boss: The Dune Queen

1. stage: catch the snake

2. stage: snake head

Itzamatul Industrial Complex


coordinates: 39 09'S 175 37'E

The mid-stage boss consists of three turret towers in the middle (one red and two blue) and two green turrets flying into position from the left and right of the screen. The green turrets get replaced if you destroy them, so they are a good opportunity to boost your sheields or drain them to charge your Super. Another trick is that you can bypass some of the bullet patterns by passing the boss over the top of the screen.

boss: The Cyborg Complex Engineer

During the stage progression you will find three piece of equipment being transported. These are additional pieces of armour for the end-stage boss and if you destroy them during the stage, the boss will be easier to defeat and you will earn more points as well. (TODO: explain in detail how the different armour pieces affect the boss)

Astral Sector K-7Z4-C04TL


coordinates: NaN N, NaN E

Final stage, only available on Normal and Heroic difficulty. The true last boss and consequently the final true conclusion of the story is only available on Heroic difficulty.

end-stage boss: The Invader

tip: Beating the boss in Heroic mode gives a massive bonus based on how much Super and Shield you have left.

Scoring
The total number of points awarded by an enemy at the moment of its destruction can be displayed by turning on the "display points" in the game section of the options of the game.

Damage Points
Hitting any enemy will give you points proportionally to the damage done. An extra 25 points are awarded when using Drain on an enemy and 200 extra points when using Boost on an enemy.

Destruction Points
Destroying an enemy will reward you with additional points depending on how strong the enemy was.

Crush Bonus
Destroying an enemy with a Crush weapon will multiply the destruction points by six!

Super Attack
When the Super Attack is triggered a combo counter is shown on top of the ship. It raises faster with many or very strong enemies. Each combo hit will reward with 2674 points.

General tips
Combine Damage Bonus and Crush Bonus by milking an enemy with Drain and then quickly changing to a Crush weapon to deal the killing blow.

Strategy
As the amount of Shield and Super that you have at the end of a stage is what your ship will start out with at the beginning of the next stage, so it is incredibly important to have your shield as close to full after an end stage boss.

You can milk most bosses for score, but in most cases after a re-spawnable part shows up for the 8th time (including the first appearance), two undestroyable lasers will slowly appear and start narrowing the playing field until they destroy you. When they start appearing, it becomes a case of kill or be killed.(TODO: double-check the timing details)

Achievements
Through the Achievements menu item you gain access to the gallery that unlocks additional artwork depending on different conditions, 30 pictures in total.

For the most part the conditions are written under the unlockable picture already from the start, but for some pieces the achievements are hidden.

Xbox One
Released on July 7th, 2019, it runs at 1080p on Xbox One and 4K on Xbox One X.

Nintendo Switch
Released on July 7th, 2019 with a day-one patch, it was locked to 30FPS with a quite some input lag and worse performance in TV mode than handheld. The version features an exclusive alternate ship coloring (named JoyFul) that depends on the Joy-Cons used to play the game. The colours of the attached Joy-Cons so that the player decides which one takes on the colour of the extremities, while the other slightly tints the darker parts of the ship. In all cases the pod continues to glow in the colour of the active weapon.



A patch was released a year later on June 1st, 2020 fixing the performance issues and unlocking the framerate to 60FPS in both handheld (720p) and TV mode (1080p) with dynamic resolution for the toughest parts of the game. The patch also added offline achievements to the Switch version, with an artwork gallery, and access to the alternate ship was simplified. It was also added the possibility to swap the effect of the joy-cons on the colors of the alternate ship.

Playstation 4
Released on February 11th, 2020, it runs at 1080p on PS4 and 1440p on PS4 Pro. The light bar of the Dualshock 4 changes color depending on which weapon is being used and flashes red on low shield energy. This feature is also enabled on PC when playing with that controller.

PC
Only available to Kickstarter backers, it released in a triptych digipack with manual and ex-libris cards of the artworks of Alexandre Chaudret with bright highlights. It was sent to backers on August 2019. It includes executables for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Playstation 4
Released on February 14th, 2020 courtesy of Eastasiasoft through Play-Asia, it was limited to 2000 copies. Marked as "Limited Edition", the box includes a regular PS4 blu-ray with a manual in a regular PS4 plastic case and a CD with the soundtrack.

Nintendo Switch
Released on December 11th, 2020 again courtesy of Eastasiasoft through Play-Asia, it was released both as a limited edition of which 2000 copies have been produced and as a regular edition which the number of copies printed is unknown. The limited edition is similar to the PS4 edition as it contains an additional soundtrack CD. The regular edition is a regular Switch plastic case with a manual. Both are marked "Definitive Edition" as they already include all the patches of the eShop version.

Development
The game was developed by a small team of French Indie developers based in Bordeaux. The game uses the Unity3D game engine, FMOD sound system and Rewired to support a wide range of controllers.

It was kickstarted in April 2017. , received financial support from the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma) and Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine.

Name origin
The humans from this alternate future master light and gravity. With such technology, they can very easily manipulate even the most dense and huge rocks. Everything in this world is thus made out of stones, flying stones! In Quechua, a language still spoken today in central America, “to fly” is “Phaway” and the word for rocks is “Rumi“, hence, phawayru... phawaru... Pawarumi!

Links to real places
Since Pawarumi takes place on Earth, the coordinates match with real locations, all of which are national parks:


 * Alaska, Secret Base Class T.I.K.A.L. is located in Kluane National Park and Reserve in Yukon, Canada
 * Xibalba: Doors of the Underworld lies in the Devil's Sinkhole State Natural Area in Texas, USA
 * Dune Ocean of Cha-Ni takes place in the Namib-Naukluft National Park in Namibia
 * Itzamatul Industrial Complex operates in the volcanoes of Tongariro National Park in New Zealand

References & Contributions
STG Weekly #180: PAWARUMI – WR run with commentary by DrLight66 (the WR holder himself) and Daniel “MsK`” Borges (the game’s dev)