Illvelo Swamp

Illvelo Swamp

Nintendo Switch game logo

Developer:	RS34
Music:	Daisuke Nagata
Program:	Manabu Matsumoto, Takahiro Kawachi, Hayato Okabe
Art:	Daisuke Nagata
Release date:	November 1, 2021

Illvelo Swamp is a vertically scrolling shoot-em-up developed and published by RS34 for Nintendo Switch in 2021. Like Radirgy Swag, it plays in horizontal orientation, with a slightly angled perspective.

The game's title and general aesthetics draw from the original Illvelo, though this game introduces new mechanics and has a radically different stage structure. There are 100 stages in total (as a reference to the 100 bonus stages in the original Illvelo)

Gameplay Overview

Illvelo Swamp is a twin-stick, four-button game with one playable ship. The left analog stick is used to control the ship (with uniform speed) in any direction, or with the directional pad in a total of eight directions. The right analog stick can be used to control the detachable Doll (modules) independently from the ship.

Controls

Buttons are configurable in the options menu.

• Shot: Shoots a forward-facing shot
• Doll: Various Doll-related features
  • If Doll are docked to the ship : Launches Doll/Activates Megalodoll
  • If Doll are detached : (Hold) Moves the Doll in the same direction the ship is moving/(Double tap) Returns Doll to the ship
  • If Megalodoll is activated : (Double tap) Deactivates Megalodoll and returns Doll to the ship
• Megalophaz: Generates a circular field around the ship that grants temporary invincibility, absorbs all bullets that touch it, and collects items. Equivalent to a bomb in other games.
• A. Shot: A toggle to turn continuous shot on or off. With this toggle enabled, the ship (and Doll) will continuously shoot as if the shot button is pressed down. This can reduce finger strain for the player.

Also, a shield appears in front of the ship and Doll if the shot button is not pressed for a short time. The shield remains in front of the ship and Doll and absorbs bullets until either the shot button is pressed again.

Doll

Your ship is a modified TRAX called Xenostrepsi. It has a pair of circular modules called Doll. Doll are very useful for defense as Doll delete most hazards upon contact.

The two ways of moving Doll shown in the Doll settings menu. (left) Holding the Doll button. In the default Doll speed setting, Doll move at the same speed and direction as the ship. (right) Tilting the right stick. Doll move faster and independently of the ship movement.

You can detach Doll from the ship by pressing the Doll button. After being detached, Doll launch in the direction the ship is moving or to the front if the ship is not moving. Doll shoot normal shots even when separated from the ship. To move the detached Doll, simply use your right stick. In this way, you can move Doll faster and more freely than the traditional method, which is to hold Doll button and move the ship. The speed at which Doll move can be configured in the Doll settings menu.

Double-tap the Doll button to return Doll to the ship.

Attribute

the icons for three attributes seen in the ranking screen.

There are three attributes of attack you can perform in this game: shot, shuriken, and shield. The ship and Doll fire normal shots with the shot attribute. The shuriken attribute attack occurs when you are holding the Shot button and detached Doll are on an enemy. When that happens, Doll turn green and start to deal contact damage. At the same time, they shoot a spiraling wave of shuriken. When not firing, the ship deploys a shield in front of itself, and Doll also obtain shield attribute. You can deal damage by hitting enemies with the shield (you do not take damage when the ship touches an enemy), but with enough leveling you can reflect enemy bullets by the shield and shoot "ref-shots," another shield attribute attack.

In later stages, you will encounter enemies with attribute barriers. An enemy with such barrier do not take damage unless it gets hit by Megalophaz or attacks with the attribute specified by the color of the barrier.

Level-up Mechanic

In-game level display and EXP gauge seen in the bottom left corner of the screen.

You can increase the attack power by getting EXP and leveling up each of the attributes. You can get EXP of one attribute by hitting or defeating enemies with attacks with said attribute. You can also get a small amount of shield EXP for deleting enemy bullets with the shield. Oddly enough, you get shot EXP for destroying parts of mid-sized enemies even with shuriken or shield attribute attacks. You do not get EXP for destroying enemies with Megalophaz. For efficient leveling, you can get three types of bonuses depending on the type of enemy you destroy.

Leader Badge

	Leader First: In each formation of flying enemies, there is usually one leader signified by a leader badge attached to it. If you destroy the leader before any other enemy in the formation, a thumbs-up icon appears, and you get a Leader First bonus.
	Formation: If you defeat all flying enemies in a formation, you get a Formation bonus.
	Parts All: If you destroy all parts of a mid-sized enemy and then defeat it, you get a Parts All bonus.

Leveling up does not only make attacks stronger, but also changes the attacks' properties. For the shot attribute, the fire rate and the shot speed increases and Doll starts shooting more shots in more directions at once. Shuriken slows down on contact with enemies at a very high level. For the shield attribute, refshots get bigger and change their design.

All attributes start at level 0 and are capped at level 300. At the end of every game, the levels for all attributes and the total level are recorded in rankings. The maximum ship level, 900, is barely reachable.

Megalomajill, Megalophaz and Megalodoll

Megalophaz

In the bottom right corner of the screen is the Megalomajill gauge. Megalomajill slowly recharges over time, but you have to defeat enemies by non-Megalodoll attacks in order to quickly get Megalomajill. When the gauge is full, you can activate Megalophaz, a bomb in other games. It deals a good amount of damage to the enemies caught in the field it generates.
There is another type of special attacks that consume Megalomajill called Megalodoll. If Doll are docked to the ship, you can activate Megalodoll by pressing the Doll button while tilting the right stick. There are four types of Megalodoll, and you choose which Megalodoll to activate by the direction of the right stick. Three of them have their respective attributes, and the other one has no attributes. If you activate Megalodoll with the full gauge, it lasts for about 10 seconds without recharging until Megalomajill is depleted. You cannot activate Megalodoll if the Megalomajill gauge is under 20%.

Megalodoll with an attack attribute gives you EXP and score bonuses.

Doll Movement	Name	Attribute	Right stick direction in the default setting	Description	What the right stick controls
	Rolling Doll	Shield	Up	Doll rotate around the ship. They can even erase flames upon contact.	The radius of rotation
	Homing Doll	Multi-attribute	Right	Each one of the Doll modules automatically attacks a separate enemy. How Homing Doll chooses the enemy to attack is not known yet. This Megalodoll can ignore attribute barriers. This Megalodoll does not give you score/EXP bonuses.	Nothing
	Wide Doll	Shot	Down	Doll move sideways while shooting, giving you a wider area of attack.	The movement direction and distance
	Reflect Doll	Shuriken	Left	Doll bounce around the screen and scatter shuriken all over the screen.	the angle of reflection

Items

An item spawns when a leader is defeated, or all enemies in a formation of flying enemies are killed, or a middle-sized enemy is destroyed. Items are attracted towards the ship if it is close to them. Item names below are based on ones shown in the logs of the DEV mode in Illvelo Swamp Happy Together.

	Score item/Hi-Score item/Sp-Score item: Worth 1000/10000/100000 points respectively. Point values are tripled in blue stages.
	Unfortunate item: Nothing happens when collected.
	Level up half item: Unlike what their name and appearance suggest, it gives a quarter of the EXP gauge of the attribute with the lowest level.
	Level up item: Unlike what the name and appearance suggest, it fills up half of the EXP gauge of the attribute with the lowest level.
	Level up double item: Unlike what the name and appearance suggest, it gives you 1 level for the attribute with the lowest level and keeps the EXP gauge.
	Mail item: Generates a random email at the bottom of the screen.
	Shot erase item: Erases all enemy bullets on the screen.
	Shield deploy item: The ship deploys a shield even if it is currently shooting. This effect lasts for 10 seconds.
	Invincible item: Gives the ship temporal invincibility for 10 seconds.
	Megalomajill item: Instantly fully recharges Megalomajill gauge, enabling Megalodoll or Megalophaz.
	Extend item: Increases your life count by 1 (up to 5 lives).
	Random item: Gives you the effect of randomly chosen one of the 19 items described above.
	Key(bronze/silver/gold): Spawns at the top of the screen when a key order is cleared. Required for unlocking the stage branches. Comes in three variants: the standard bronze one, the silver one worth 5 keys, and the gold one worth 10 keys. Even if you fail to touch and collect a spawned key, it is considered collected when it disappears to the bottom of the screen.

Bullets and Hazards

You do not take damage from touching enemies. At first, enemies do not fire anything and you can focus on map orders very safely. However, as the game progresses, they start to shoot more bullets, especially more hard-to-cancel bullets and some actual dodging becomes a requirement. Almost all enemy bullets travel no faster than the ship. In this section, the hazards are introduced along with the weapon that can cancel them.

Normal shots can cancel:

	Harmless Bullets: These bullets were shot by some specific enemies. You do not take damage from them but can still destroy them.
	〇: You lose a life when the ship (or its hitbox) touches one of these, so you have to either dodge them or break them.
	Missiles: Small Missiles (left) flies slowly and have homing properties. Large Missiles (right) fly straight down fast after slowly spreading around their launch ports.

Shield, Doll and Megalodoll (other than Rolling Doll) can cancel:
All enemy bullets described above

Normal bullets: There are small ones, teardrop-shaped ones, and large ones.

Rolling Doll can cancel:
All enemy bullets described above

Flames: Flames are usually hard to cancel in RS34/Milestone games, and only some of the bombs were capable of erasing them before this game. However, they are much easier to deal with in this game thanks to the new Rolling Doll.

Megalophaz can cancel:
All enemy bullets described above

Molotov Cocktails: A Molotov cocktail can be shattered by any type of weapon, but the resulting pink explosion stays there for a while. This explosion can only be erased by Megalophaz.

Nothing can cancel:

Lasers: A few specific enemies and some bosses emit lasers. They do not disappear unless they stop firing or are defeated.

Map Orders

One can say the goal of this game is to clear all stages. You clear a stage by surviving for a set amount of time (or defeating the boss if it is a boss stage), but this game has 100 stages and 88 of them are locked at first. To unlock them, you need to clear map orders and get keys.
Each stage has a total of 9 map orders: a gold key order, a silver key order, a bronze key order and 6 sub orders. Clearing a key order rewards you with a key. You need to pause the game to see the detailed explanation and the exact current progress of the orders, but you can get what they require based on the icons. These icons also have functions as progress bars for their respective orders. There are orders that require defeating enemies and ones that don't.

Defeat Enemies

The majority of the map orders, including all key orders, require defeating enemies.
A "defeat enemies" order has up to 3 requirements. Take this order icon for example:

The icon means "Defeat ①enemy SF1 (「あの花」, lit. "That Flower") ②leader first ③with the shuriken attribute."
Below is the explanation for each part of the icons.

Explanation	Example	What the example icon means
①: What enemies to defeat. Most of the time the picture of the enemy to defeat is shown in the center part of the icon. However, sometimes letters like "ALL", "FL", "MID" or "GR" are used instead of enemy pictures. In these cases all, all flying, all mid-sized, or all ground enemies respectively count.		Defeat mid-sized enemies.
②: How you defeat enemies. Three icons can come in the bottom left corner of the icon, and their meaning are tied to the three defeat bonus mentioned above in this page. Leader badges: Leader First. Three blue circles: Formation. A blushing stickman: Parts All.		Defeat enemy SF1 formations.
		Defeat enemy M1 (「キュウマルニ」, lit. "902") parts-all.
③: Attribute/weapon specification. An attribute icon, a Megalodoll icon, or even a Megalophaz icon can come in the bottom right corner of the icon, specifying what weapon to defeat the enemies with. There are some exceptions to this rule. If the order is "Defeat enemies with (a type of Megalodoll/Megalophaz)," simply the Megalodoll/Megalophaz icon is shown instead of "ALL" in ① and the Megalodoll icon in ③, possibly to avoid confusion with the USE orders described later. In boss stages, silver and gold key orders have "ORDR+n" (n: a number) in ③. This means "clear n sub orders."		Defeat enemy M2 (「牛鬼」, lit. "Ushioni") with Wide Doll.
		Defeat enemies with Reflect Doll.
		Defeat Midorikun (boss) parts-all and clear 3 sub orders.

Others

There are orders that don't require killing enemies.

	Move [up/right/down/left]: Requires a total of 15 or 20 seconds with a directional input in the direction the icon indicates. The ship does not have to be actually moving as long as the directional input is there. Since this game implements analog directional input, a small amount of deviation from the required direction is allowed.
	Do not move: Requires a total of 30 seconds without a directional input to move the ship.
	Stay on the [top/right/bottom/left] of the screen: Stay at indicated edge of screen for a total of 20 seconds.
	Use: Activate the feature indicated in the bottom right of the icon a certain number of times (usually 5 or less). Doll/Megalodoll is considered used once when Doll are released from the ship, so spamming the Doll button can help.
	Do not use Megalophaz: Do not activate Megalophaz in this stage if you want to clear this order.
	Get items: Requires getting a certain number of items.
	Delete enemy bullets: Requires deleting a certain number of enemy bullets using Doll, Megalophaz, etc.
	Receive Messages: Requires receiving a certain number of messages. You can get more messages by staying in the upper area of the screen.
	Get Hurt: Requires getting hit by an enemy bullet and lose a life (twice in later stages). Only appears as a sub order in a boss stage.

Stages and Sections

Illvelo Swamp has a dynamic enemy wave system like most of RS34/Milestone games, where once all enemies in a formation/wave disappear (either by being defeated or leaving the screen), the next enemy formation/wave spawns. Multiple enemy wave patterns usually coexist (for example, there could be two sets of flying enemy waves and another two sets of mid-sized enemy waves at the same time), and each stage is defined by these enemy wave patterns and when each of them is activated.

Stage Rank

If you visit a stage for the first time, you see "RANK ★" along with the stage title. If you get the bronze key and clear the stage, the rank goes up to ★★ the next time you get in. If you get the silver or gold key, the rank will be ★★★. Generally, when the stage rank goes up, more enemies appear and the leader enemies are relocated so that it is easier to get Leader First bonuses. In a boss stage (except for stage 99 and 100), the keys you obtain in the stages leading to said boss stage are also taken into consideration, and the rank is ★★★★★ at maximum.

Stage Colors

As the stages get unlocked and mapped on the world map, routes with different colors emerge. These colors help with identifying stages you need to play for unlocking branches, but they are not purely for distinction. In fact, stages with different colors have different properties, such as item drop rates.

Color	Items frequently found	Additional explanations
Pink		These stages are unlocked by default.
Green		Early-game stages. A noticeable amount of key orders have attribute requirements.
Orange		These stages have harder enemies for their stage numbers.
Blue		You get tons of scores in these stages.
Yellow		You get more experience points by defeating enemies in yellow stages.
Purple		You need to get a lot of keys in this section to unlock the final section of the red stages.
Red	None	One can say these are "normal" stages. The red stage route is very long, and you unlock it section by section to get to the final stages of this game.
Maroon		Mostly boss stages. An ending cutscene plays after you defeat a boss.

Unlocking Stage branches with Required Keys

Upon encountering a locked branch, the requirement for unlocking said branch is shown in a kind of cryptic way. Most of the unlocking conditions are:

• Get a certain key in a certain boss stage.
• Get a certain number of keys in a certain section (consecutive stages) indicated by the color of the text. You have to get required amount of keys in one go.

When a branch is unlocked, Cheep'O gives you a message indicating "a lock was opened somewhere" right after the ranking screen.

Stage Select

You can choose the starting stage from all the stages you cleared. This stage-select feature is useful in several ways, such as choosing the stage at the beginning of the section where you need to obtain the keys to unlock a stage branch. The ship is given a set amount of levels if you start at a specific stage, but they are lower than the levels you could get if you start from stage 1 and get to the selected stage.

Advanced Strategies

There are three categories in the online ranking: the keys collected, the total ship level, and the score. To maximize them, you must start at stage 1 and finish at stage 100.
Unlike the original Illvelo, the number of keys and the total ship level are unrelated to the score calculation, and a different approach should be taken for each category.

Development History

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Trivia

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Gallery

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References & Contributors

• Information on gameplay mechanics gained by mojilove through playing the game.